The fact that Charles Leclerc was much more competitive at Spielberg on Sunday than he was on Saturday is, he says, down to the fact that he worked on his driving style overnight
In the sprint at Spielberg, Charles Leclerc still had no chance against Max Verstappen, but in the race the Ferrari driver suddenly gained strength and won the Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring – and did so with no less than three overtaking manoeuvres against the world champion.
However, Leclerc can’t exactly explain why things went much better on Sunday under similar conditions. He only says: “We have worked enormously on my driving style since yesterday. I knew I had a bit more pace on the mediums.”
Verstappen and Leclerc had both contested the sprint on the medium tyres. Verstappen led from the start and was never in danger of being overtaken by Leclerc for the entire 23 laps. It was a completely different story in the race: The Ferrari driver caught his World Championship rival on the twelfth lap before the latter turned off for a tyre change.
“Yes, it was a surprise that we made such a step forward,” said Leclerc. “We have to analyse it to understand it.”
The Monegasque, however, does not want to go into detail. “It was simply down to the driving style. I think there were two or three corners where I had problems yesterday – especially turns 1, 3 and 10. But I worked on those overnight and today it was much better,” Leclerc said after the race.
The win in Spielberg was a much-needed result for him after not being on the podium since the Miami race. Since then, something always came up: The technical retirements in Barcelona and Baku, the botched strategy in Monaco, the engine change in Canada and the Ferrari blunder when they failed to bring him into the pits during the safety car period at Silverstone.
As a result, Ferrari had squandered a fairly comfortable lead from Leclerc, leaving him 43 points behind in the interim.
“I definitely needed that,” he said after the win. “Whenever I had come to a new race, I had a smile on my face and was optimistic. But because hard race followed hard race, it felt like everything was against me. But now we finally had a good race and it feels really good to have a win again. “
