Charles Leclerc believes his early duel with Carlos Sainz hurt his victory chances in the Austrian Grand Prix Sprint.
The Monegasque narrowly lost out on taking the lead on the run to Turn 1, but a compromised line through the corner allowed his Ferrari teammate to overtake.
Leclerc wasted little time in reclaiming second at Turn 4 but then had to aggressively fend off Sainz for a few laps, allowing Verstappen to pull ahead.
Charles and Carlos battling hard for P2 ⚔️#AustrianGP #F1Sprint pic.twitter.com/KQZgx4J8KF
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 9, 2022
That battle though meant Charles wasn’t able to properly execute his Sprint plan, potentially costing him the chance to fight the Red Bull late on.
“It was tricky,” Leclerc said post-race. “Obviously the first part of the race was all about managing, but Max was very quick.
“He was pushing quite a lot at the beginning so I was trying to control my tyres to attack at the end, but then we had a small fight with Carlos.
“Towards the end, I started to push, I was gaining a little bit, but it was very close overall,” he added. “Tomorrow is the race and hopefully we can have as good of a start as today and put a bit more pressure on Max.”
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With Verstappen likely to be a very tough man to beat in front of the Orange Army, Leclerc was asked if he thought Ferrari could work together to challenge the Red Bull driver.
“I really hope so,” he simply responded.
As for Sainz, he enjoyed the early wheel-to-wheel action in Spielberg.
“I had a good start with a couple of fights at the beginning, first with Max, then with Charles into Turn 4 a bit later in the race,” he explained.
“It was good fun like it should be – good racing, but then I overheated the tyres a bit running behind Charles, so I had to back off to recover them and finish the race.”
Looking ahead to Sunday, the Spaniard pointed to the tyres as a potential difference-maker across the 71 laps in Austria.
“We’ll need to improve the pace a little bit because he looked to be very, very strong at the beginning of the race,” he said. “Then little by little, it looked like we were starting to match him.
“Tomorrow is a longer race and we will go through different compounds, so I think anything can happen.
“The important thing is that we are both in the fight and we will try our best to beat Max.”