“And that cost me a little bit at the end. But overall, it was just a race where I had to be patient at the beginning, I was stuck behind cars in the middle part of the race. I was stuck behind Esteban [Ocon], who had much newer tyres and was very good out of Turn 10, so that was enough for him to keep me behind. And whenever I had free air, I think the pace was really good. But it’s like this.
“It was all about thinking about the end of the race, and not getting too frustrated, because I just couldn’t do anything when everyone has DRS.”
That patience was exactly what was needed. It would have been easy to lose a front wing endplate or to flat spot his tyres in trying to work his way through the field, but he kept his head. That was exactly what team boss Mattia Binotto had asked of him.
“It’s something we decided very soon after Baku,” Binotto said of the PU change and grid penalty. “It’s something he was aware of since now many days. So he had time to digest, and be prepared for the race weekend.
Leclerc managed to fight back through the field in Montreal
Ferrari
“So he was focusing his race weekend, knowing that he would have started from the back of the grid today on the race. And so even his Friday programme and Saturday programmes was focused on high fuel runs, just to make sure that he was prepared for the race itself.
“And it’s certainly a frustrating situation for a driver. The race would have required a lot of patience, which I think has been the case. Because sometimes you would certainly like to overtake, but you cannot maybe because there is a DRS train, or because your tyres are worn.
“But finally, limiting the damage starting from the back and finishing fifth is still a good race result. And now he’s got fresh power units for the next races, certainly. And we’ve got four races to the summer break that will be important for him, where you can attack. And let’s try to somehow recover some points if we can.”
Ferrari has had to weather a storm after early-season success
Ferrari
As Binotto suggests reliability is key, and it’s now essential that Leclerc can at least get through the British, Austrian, French and Hungarian races without mechanical dramas.
It’s also inevitable that he will need another fresh power unit at some stage, but Ferrari does at least now have time in which to make the reliability fixes that are allowed within the constraints of the PU development freeze. Given the failures also suffered by customers Haas and Alfa Romeo, several related to the MGU-K, there is a lot of work to be done.
