Charles Leclerc Explains How Ferrari Gave Up a Potential Podium at Imola

In an otherwise dismal season, Charles Leclerc has been Scuderia Ferrari’s knight in shining armor. The Monegasque delivered a top-notch performance yet again, finishing the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in P5.

However, Leclerc believed a different strategy call could have given him a podium. Leclerc said, “I thought of the podium at one point. It didn’t happen, but we were very close to it.”

The Ferrari man was behind eventual 3rd place finisher Daniel Ricciardo during a late safety car period. However, once the lights turned green, he was passed by a flying Daniil Kvyat.

The reason for which he notched up to “the restart, being behind Daniel with the cold tyres, I was struggling quite a bit. Then Daniil passed me.

“I’ll have to analyze a bit better… whether we should have gone on the medium (instead of the hard, on the first stop) and probably stopped a bit later for the soft.”

Hindsight is a great tool to have. But despite Ferrari having a history of making some questionable strategy calls, they can be defended this time around, sighting the unexpected safety car period.

However, despite the strategy qualms, the 23-year-old was pretty happy with his overall performance.

Charles Leclerc shares his thoughts about his performance at Imola

The Monegasque driver said, “It’s always tricky to know whether it was the right move or not. But at the end, (we kept Perez behind) which was the most important, as he’s the closest to us in the championship.”

Leclerc currently has 85 points to his name. He sits in 5th place on the Drivers’ Championship table and seems to be handling the Ferrari SF1000 a lot better than his teammate, Sebastian Vettel.

“I was pretty comfortable. We were actually quite competitive during the whole race. We were maybe a tiny bit quicker on the hard compound at the beginning. But not by much. Not enough to overtake for sure.

“At the restart, I struggled a bit more compared to Daniel, who did a great job, so P5, I’m happy.”

Heading to Turkey next, Leclerc would hope for another solid outing, adding some buffer to Perez on the championship charts.