“Good surprise to be fighting far up”- Charles Leclerc amazed at Ferrari competing midfield battle intensely

“Good surprise to be fighting far up”- Charles Leclerc amazed by seeing Ferrari competing other teams intensively in the midfield.

There’s no doubt that Charles Leclerc is making most out of Ferrari’s not so competitive 2020 season car, as he is consistently delivering results for the Italian team.

At Imola also Leclerc managed to grab P5 after having an intense battle with Daniel Ricciardo and Sergi Perez on two different occasions. Ricciardo managed to get better off the Monegasque driver, but Perez with necessary pit stop had to lose the battle.

With an impressive result, Lecler revealed that it is a good surprise that Ferrari is intensively fighting against their rivals, with a spot in the top-3 looks distant.

Seb was driving with a damaged front wing endplate the entire race https://t.co/uDPVfA2jtx pic.twitter.com/fJhmdvbOZe

— tami. (@Vetteleclerc) November 1, 2020

“I am quite happy. I mean before the race if you would have told me we’d finish P5 then I’d be very happy because I think we were quite worried about our pace on the soft especially at the beginning of the race and this went a lot better than expected because I think we were maybe a bit quicker than Daniel towards the end so we managed them well,” he said.

“But then, looking back at the race I believe they were a bit more here and there, I would have probably hoped to stay a bit longer on that soft but it’s the way it is. As I said, I think it’s a good surprise to be fighting so far up today. I am satisfied with P5.”

Impressed on how Ferrari dealt with adversity

It has been argued that with the engine regulations imposed by Formula 1 on Ferrari last year played a role in the quality of the engine production and present state of the car. But still, Leclerc says that the team has managed to pull themselves off impressively.

“This is I think is the most positive thing in the last three, four weeks,” Leclerc added. “We’ve brought small steps all the time but always in the right direction.

“Whenever we had an issue we analysed it and we seemed to get it better at the race afterwards so to see this progress and the way that once we analysed something we managed to get better at it is a good sign for the future.”

“Obviously, we need to continue that way. There’s still a long road ahead looking at the Mercedes for example,” he concluded.

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

Read More