Charles Leclerc was certainly surprised by F1 Dutch GP podium, keeping Oscar Piastri behind who thought qualifying and bad start undone him.
It started decently for Ferrari’s Leclerc in F1 Dutch GP when he tucked himself right back at McLaren’s Piastri, who lost to Mercedes’ George Russell off the line. The trio stuck together for most part of the grand prix, especially the Monegasque in a surprise show.
Even Leclerc was surprised to be on pace and right on the tail of Piastri, who couldn’t clear Russell after losing him off the line. The strategy then came into play where the Monegasque stopped early with the Australian opting to pit quite late.
This allowed Leclerc to have track position in third, even Russell got ahead of Piastri. The Brit was forced to a two-stopper due to high degradation, allowing the Australian to get on the tail of the Monegasque in the second half of the F1 grand prix.
What looked like an easy target became hard pass for Piastri. Despite the hustle, Leclerc managed to retain third in the end, which he didn’t think he would be able to considering how far ahead Lando Norris finished in his grand prix win over Max Verstappen.
“I think the best question is also to understand why we were nine tenths off yesterday and suddenly pretty strong today,” started Leclerc. “The car is exactly the same. Yesterday, we’ve been struggling like crazy. Today, we were strong. And these are the kind of things that we’ve got to work on.
“I think as much as we analyse every bad surprise we have during a season, we also need to understand when we do something good. For now, I don’t think as a team we have the explanation. So it’s a great result. I’m really happy to be standing on the podium. And I think it’s a really good surprise.
“However, we’ve got to understand in order to perform more often at our best. It wasn’t easy to maintain the rhythm towards the end, because my engineer was telling me about Oscar’s lap time, which when he was in free air was quite a bit quicker than me, I think nearly a second.
“Then when he got closer, I started to push a bit more and gain five tenths. And I think with the dirty air, he probably lost three or four tenths. He managed to stay behind and to put me quite under pressure for two, three laps, but then couldn’t stay there because of the overheating.
“It was a really good strategy. I did not expect to keep that third place until the end, but we did a really good job as a team. I don’t think there was anything more we could have done today,” summed up Leclerc. On the other side, Piastri felt him running in dirty air made it difficult in the race for him eventually to pass for podium.
At first, he was stuck behind Russell and then behind Leclerc. Also, Ferrari’s stronger than expected pace caught them out as well, as he seeks consistency for himself. “That [getting stuck behind Russell] is one part of the puzzle, it is based out of qualifying, just not been competitive enough when it mattered,” said Piastri.
“The start obviously didn’t help with the things, it just kind of boxed a little bit as I think the pace in the clean air was quite strong. Clearly, the car was quick, just that I spent 60 of the 70 odd laps within a second of the car in front, so that made life pretty painful. Maybe in the first stint, it wasn’t straightforward to keep Leclerc behind and then in the second stint, it was a bit stronger than I expected.
“Yeah, a little bit surprising but days like this happens with this car it seems. For ourselves, it has been a few races like that, some races it could be opposite as well where you have a really strong Saturday and Sunday is not so good. It is just not been consistently good enough. I think there were definitely moments in the weekend where I felt very strong and very comfortable.
“I think Friday was very strong especially on one lap, even qualifying was looking very strong, just that I didn’t find enough in the last lap in qualifying and then it made life very painful and then I had quite a bad start in the race, which really kind of set the tone for the afternoon. When the team wins by 22-odd seconds, clearly there are things to improve and work on, I’ll try and make sure that I am back again in a better place.”
Here’s how F1 Dutch GP panned out
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