Charles Leclerc could have been pleased to convert his first Q3 appearance into a points finish on Sunday, instead, he was frustrated not to do better than P10 at the French GP.
Starting eighth, well ahead of what many believe his Sauber car is capable of, the Monegasque battled hard, moving ahead of Kimi Raikkonen at the start, but would slip back eventually having to settle for the final point.
A key moment came in those early laps, as he tried to keep pace with the cars around him, and talking after the race it was that which was his main focus.
“I’m happy, but I’m always hard on myself and I’m a little bit disappointed with myself,” Leclerc told Sky F1.
“At one point I was catching Kevin, we were in his DRS zone. I really wanted to do the best first sector I could to be as close as possible to try and overtake him, but I lost the car in Turn 2 and we lost the position to Nico [Hulkenberg].
“It’s like this, we’ve had a very good run in the last couple of races, with not many mistakes from both sides, so sometimes it happens and I’ll try to learn from it and come back stronger.”
What that does prove is, while many are already hailing him as a future star, the 20-year-old is never satisfied and that is the kind of mentality that separates the good from the great.
It was his fourth top 10 in five races though and looking forward, Leclerc admits it is hard to know just how competitive his car actually is.
“I haven’t driven any other cars but we are definitely rebuilding the team. They are coming back from two very hard years,” he commented.
“For now we are seeing the progress, this is nice to see.
“I think there is quite a lot of jobs to do, but today we managed to hit our balance in the perfect way and that’s helped to have such a performance.”
