Charles Leclerc says he and Ferrari need to understand why his pace was so good after recovering to fourth in the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix.
Earlier in the weekend, the Monegasque had been struggling more than most to extract pace from the medium and hard tyre over a single lap, but on Sunday the SF1000 was a different car as Charles overhauled the upper midfield teams and even kept Mercedes on their toes late on.
“I’m so happy today,” Leclerc told Sky Sports. “I mean, for me it feels like a victory, and of course it’s not looking good once we call fourth place a victory, but at the moment it’s where we are at.
“Last year I think my weakest point was the tyre management, and I’ve worked very hard, and every time I work and that I see the results are still on track, it’s a huge satisfaction.
“And to get a fourth place today, I expected to go eighth in the best case scenario this morning or further down the grid. So extremely happy with this fourth place.”
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Leclerc’s result followed his somewhat fortuitous third place after Mercedes’ late punctures at Silverstone a week earlier, and another was in sight until Lewis Hamilton’s late charge.
“We were very happy and to be honest, we need to analyse to understand why we were so quick because I don’t really understand for now,” the 22-year-old continued.
“Honestly, I don’t really understand where we managed to achieve this performance because even at the end of the run with the hard, I was doing very well.
“Even at a certain point I even thought about attacking Bottas, something I thought couldn’t happen this year,” he admitted.
“I tried to resist Hamilton [late on] because it’s right to choose when to do it.
“At the beginning [after Lewis had stopped], I gave him space because I was busy doing my race, in the end, I was on the podium and I believed in it until the end.
“The podium would have been unexpected and exceptional, but in the end I couldn’t defend myself.”
