Charles Leclerc: I hope we win Sunday’s race

At the start of the sprint in Austin, Charles Leclerc tried to attack Max Verstappen in the first corner, but the reigning world champion retained the lead and the Ferrari driver was overtaken by Lewis Hamilton. Charles finished third and expressed hope that he could challenge for victory in Sunday’s race.

Carlos Sainz was the only one to start on soft tires. This gave him a lead in the opening laps and the Spaniard climbed to fourth place, but as the tires wore out Sainz fell back to sixth position, from where he started the sprint.

Charles Leclerc (3rd): “At the start I saw an opportunity and a free space on the track. I tried to take advantage of that and Max and I had a tight fight. I lost position to Lewis, but Mercedes’ race pace was still slightly faster than ours.

We need to understand what we can do better to take a step forward in Sunday’s race. We have a lot of information at our disposal to analyze. Carlos and I had different strategies today, which should help during the race, because we know how the Soft tires perform on the course. I hope this gives us an advantage and we can fight for the win.”

Carlos Sainz (6th): “We fitted Soft tires because we thought they could withstand the sprint distance, but that turned out not to be the case. I had serious problems with the pace – you could see it from the outside, but in the cockpit the situation was even more difficult, because I had to defend almost the entire sprint. However, we were able to collect useful data on the performance of the tires before the race, and now we can focus on that.

I don’t think the car suffered any damage after contact with Oscar Piastri’s car at the start. My problem with the pace had to do with the tires.

As I said, we have gathered the necessary information about the performance of the tires and we can concentrate on Sunday’s race. We sacrificed a little in the sprint to be in better shape for the race. But if I had started on Medium, I could have finished a little higher.”