Charles Leclerc secured a third-place start for the Bahrain Grand Prix. Surprised by the result, the Monegasque driver beamed as he praised the Ferrari team for “pushing like crazy” to introduce the new upgrades.
Ferrari arrived in Bahrain with a new floor, and on top of the upgrades, the Maranello outfit has been experimenting plenty with different setups over the past few weeks. Leclerc confirmed that it now “feels like I’ve found my way a little bit.”
While speaking to the media following qualifying, Leclerc explained:
“Honestly, I didn’t expect P3. I knew that in Q3 there was some lap time. I knew that in Q1 and Q2 I just had to be patient and wait for the track to come to us.
“It was a bit tricky because at the beginning of Q3 everything felt really bad with the old tyres but then as soon as we put on the new tyres it was quite a bit better.
“I’m happy. I did not expect it but I think it’s a result of… we explored quite a lot of extreme setups in the last few weekends, and it feels like I’ve found my way a little bit.
“And little by little, I hope there will be more performance to extract from the car in the weekends to come.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
Photo by: Giuseppe Cacace – AFP – Getty Images
“The team has pushed like crazy to bring those upgrades here. I don’t think it’s the best track to have upgrades on, but it’s always good. It’s a small gain, not a big one, but hopefully next week it should be a bit more of a step.
“If we are P3 today, especially considering such fine margins with P3, the upgrades helped.”
This is a big turnaround from the Ferrari driver’s disappointing start to the season. Heading into the weekend, Leclerc branded the races so far this season as “worse than expected.”
“I’m speaking more about the expectations that we finished last year, where we are in a good momentum with the team, that you’ve got a good car, then obviously the expectations of what you are trying to target at least as a team is to at least start from there and try and improve.
“So on that, we were a little bit disappointed to see that we had gone a step back at the beginning of this year. After this testing, as we said, it’s very difficult to know where you are. I felt like we maybe kind of saw straight away that McLaren was very strong, but it was still to be confirmed.
“Now it’s confirmed and I hope that we can turn that situation around. There’s a lot of work in the background, obviously. I think that the last weekend has been more or less where we are as a team, where we stand as a team. We’ve got a few new parts here, which I hope will help us to close that gap a little bit.”
