Leclerc stars as Ferrari makes breakthrough
Ferrari definitively moved to the front of the Formula 1 midfield for the first time this year at Barcelona, where Charles
Leclerc finished fourth following an early fight with Mercedes’valtteri Bottas.
After getting the jump on Bottas at Turn 3 on the opening lap, Leclerc was able to keep the Mercedes at bay before the safety car, and appeared to catch the Finn napping on the restart to deny him the chance to quickly repass. Leclerc stayed ahead until Bottas pitted and then leapfrogged ahead in clear air, but the Ferrari driver was comfortably clear of the fight for fifth for the remainder of the race, bringing home a solid fourth-place finish on what became a two-stop strategy.
“I felt very good in the car, everything came together,”leclerc said.“i did a good start, managed the softs well, which was not easy, and then also managed the mediums very well, which we could have taken to the end. We only stopped because we had a free pitstop to [Sergio] Perez, who stopped too. It’s been a strong weekend for me overall, which is good to bounce back from Portimao when I was quite off on the Friday and Saturday, even though I had a good race too on the Sunday.”
Leclerc’s team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr was left disappointed after a slow start from sixth on the grid meant he lost places to Perez and Daniel Ricciardo. Sainz was able to clear Esteban Ocon at the first round of stops and bore down on Ricciardo in the closing stages, but fell 0.9 seconds shy at the flag, leaving him seventh.“i’m not very satisfied,”sainz said. “The car was better than the result. For the first time this year we were clearly the fastest mid-grid car, but I had a very bad first lap.”
Team boss Mattia Binotto was glad that Ferrari had sorted the pace drop-off between qualifying and the race that had marred the season’s earlier rounds, after it had worked on its tyre management weakness.“that was our sole purpose of the overall weekend,”he said.