Sauber’s Charles Leclerc continued his points scoring reign in the 2018 Formula 1 French Grand Prix, but felt he had more to offer at Paul Ricard than the 10th position.
The Monegasque made his first-ever Q3 on Saturday and managed to beat both the Haas drivers to line-up in eighth position. He made a dream start to leapfrog Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen to be sixth after Lap 1.
However, he had lost out to Haas’ Kevin Magnussen in the process whom he chased around for the remainder of the race. Raikkonen then got ahead of Leclerc while both Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas also made it through.
It soon became a battle for eighth with Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg right behind Leclerc. In his attempt to pressurise the Dane, Leclerc had a slight moment at Turn 2 on Lap 23 which allowed Hulkenberg to pass through.
“Luckily, I was in the right position [at the start during Lap 1 carnage] and we came out sixth [after the opening lap] which was great,” he started. “Overall, it is another point which is great and I am happy about.
“[But] on the other hand, the potential to be ninth was there today. I did a small mistake trying to overtake Kevin or being behind him pushing to put a bit more pressure – I lost the car in Turn 2.
“I went over the yellow kerbs and [then] lost a position to Nico. It is like this [in the end], as I said we are coming from a very strong momentum and we didn’t do many errors in the last 4-5 races and today I did one, so it happens and now I try to learn from it.”
His mistake damaged his tyres a bit as he radioed to complain when he suddenly lost pace. But in the end, the Ferrari junior had enough in his tank to see-through the race by scoring another point to be tied on 11th with Esteban Ocon in the standings.
He sits 14th though, as Sauber moved to 13 points from eight races. His teammate Marcus Ericsson fought back from his FP2 crash to finish 13th after hefty battles with both the McLaren and Williams’ drivers and also Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley.
