Charles Leclerc: Third place doesn’t suit me

Ferrari brought many new products to Imola. After the race, Charles Leclerc summarized the weekend…

Q: Charles, you became the first Ferrari driver to finish in the top three at Imola since Michael Schumacher won in 2006. Are you excited to be on stage?
Charles Leclerc: It’s always fun to be on the podium, especially in Imola. But third place doesn’t suit me. I want to be the first.

We didn’t achieve anything more because we lost in qualifying. And we will cover the reasons. But the feeling on stage was special, as always in Italy.

Q: How do you evaluate the performance of new products? Do they meet expectations?
Charles Leclerc: This is not the best route for evaluating new products. Particularly because of the height of the curbs. If you can effectively attack curbs with your car, it can neutralize the results. But telemetry shows that we got what we expected from the new products.

For some reason we had a slightly different power strategy at the start compared to McLaren and Red Bull and we fell behind going into the second corner. And in Imola, position on the track determines everything. And if there is only one tenth between Red Bull, McLaren and us, you have to do everything perfectly to achieve more.

Q: You worked with a new race engineer, Brian Bozzi. How was your first race together?
Charles Leclerc: He did well. It’s always difficult to change someone, especially in the middle of the season, like in this case. He still had a lot to learn. I also had help from Johannes, my new performance engineer, so there were two newcomers. But everything went very well. We will tighten our interaction, but the start is positive.

Question: After the mistake in the fight with Lando, did you decide to save fuel and tires?
Charles Leclerc: No, I rode at about the same pace the entire route. It was Lando who then increased his speed, I was outside the DRS zone behind him and could not return to it.

Then Lando started attacking more actively and I rolled back. I knew I had to try something different. But I didn’t have the speed reserve to attack in the last laps.

Question: The next race is in Monaco, where you haven’t had much luck in recent years. How special would it be to race on the streets where you grew up?
Charles Leclerc: Monaco is a special place for me, but I didn’t really perform well there. It is true that he was always fast, which creates optimism.

Monaco has such a specific circuit that you have to start from scratch every year. Free runs are very important to gradually increase your speed. But I am confident that we will be strong.

As I’ve said many times, these are the same streets where I took the bus to school as a child. And now I’m driving through it in Formula 1. So for me it’s a special event that I’m looking forward to.