F1 | Leclerc surprised: “Incredible podium in a difficult weekend”

Sometimes the impossible, or almost, becomes possible and miracles become reality. Charles Leclerc gave Ferrari an unexpected podium at the Dutch Grand Prix, held this afternoon at the Zandvoort track.

Starting from sixth place after a difficult qualifying, Leclerc got away perfectly from his starting position, passing Sergio Perez’s Red Bull RB20 on the outside, thus moving up to fifth place.

At that point it seemed that Charles’ race could be over, perhaps revived by the return of Perez behind him. Instead, Ferrari had no problems in managing the Mexican and even began to threaten Oscar Piastri’s McLaren.

Leclerc seemed quicker than the young McLaren driver, but perhaps unable to complete the overtaking move on the track also due to the presence of Russell in front of Piastri. At that point Ferrari attempted the undercut which succeeded flawlessly.

The Monegasque found himself ahead of both Piastri and Russell, third. At that point he had to contain Piastri’s comeback and he did it impeccably, despite having a set of tires with 8 more laps than his opponent.

“I’m very, very surprised with this result,” Leclerc said after the race. “I’m not often happy to finish a race in third place, but with what we did today we can be totally happy with the race we did, because it was a difficult weekend for us.”

“We struggled from Friday until the race, but today we had more pace and we put together a perfect strategy. We managed to overtake our opponents and then keep them behind, we had a great race and I’m happy to start the second part of the season like this.”

Leclerc then spoke of his amazement at having managed to keep behind a McLaren, but also a Red Bull and both Mercedes, finishing the race as the third fastest and on the third step of the podium.

“At the start I made a nice overtaking move on Perez. We knew we had an opportunity at the start, but what I didn’t know was that later on, during the race, we would also have the opportunity to keep them all behind us. However, I knew that the start would be a good opportunity for us to leave one or two cars behind us. I simply attacked and the overtaking went well, but I never thought I would get on the podium in such a difficult weekend for the team.”