Charles Leclerc has won his third race of the season at the United States Grand Prix in Austin. His teammate Carlos Sainz took the flag in second place, securing Ferrari’s first one-two in the US for 18 years. Leclerc explains that preparing the exit of Turn 1 was the winning move.
The weekend went pretty well for Ferrari, starting with a promising practice session. The Sprint showed great race pace, which was then confirmed in Sunday’s Grand Prix.
Starting from P4, Leclerc had a great launch. He saw championship leader Max Verstappen going for a move on his rival Lando Norris for the lead into Turn 1. The Red Bull driver ran the Briton wide and opened the gap for Leclerc who prepared the exit to get into the lead.
“It was a pretty good Turn 1,” Leclerc said when asked in the post-race interview on his move into the first corner. “That’s exactly what I wanted to do and we’ve had a really good launch. I knew that it was going to be very tight into Turn 1.
“[In the Sprint]I was a little bit the victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and today I gained from it and that obviously helped quite a lot our first stint because we had mega pace, and then in the second stint, it was all about managing behind. But we did a great job.”
He went into more details in the post-race press conference: “I knew that Max and Lando would be very aggressive towards each other. I mean, they are fighting for the championship.
“I saw that Max was going towards the inside as well as Lando, and I was like, ‘I’m just going to prepare the exit of the corner’, which was obviously a winning bet.
“And from that moment onwards, then I could focus on my own race.”
He went on to win the race by 8 seconds over Sainz, while Verstappen was nearly 20 seconds off after his battle in the final few laps with Norris. On the victory, Leclerc says that it feels great and that he hopes to reproduce the performance in future races.
“It feels really good as every victory feels special for its own reason and obviously from the start I felt really good with the car. I was quite confident from [Saturday] because even though there were quite a lot of fights yesterday the car felt great and we knew that we had a good race pace.
“We were a little bit more sceptical about qualifying but P4 was. It was good. I mean, we were in that fall of P1. And then after that start, when I got out of Turn 1 into first, I knew that it was all about trying to use the pace of the car that we had [in the Sprint] and trying to take care of those tyres.
“And the car felt great. So from that moment onwards, it was a bit of a lonely race, but it’s a good kind of lonely. And I hope we can reproduce that in the future.
Asked if there is one particular area of the car that worked well in Austin, Leclerc said: “Quite a few. I think like five, six races ago, we were struggling a little bit with bouncing and that doesn’t seem to be the issue any more. So for sure that went in the right direction again.”
Regarding the constructors’ championship, the Monégasque said, that Ferrari has to target the title even though it’s optimistic. At the moment, Ferrari is third with a small gap of eight points behind Red Bull. McLaren remains to lead the way with 540 point to its name.
“We’ve got to target winning the Constructors’ title. It’s an optimistic goal, but that’s what we are here for,” Leclerc said. “We’ll do the math at the end of the season.
“Until then, I think the best thing we can do is to focus on ourselves, on our own performance, just like we did this weekend. It’s been a really good weekend for the team and for the Constructors’ title. And we’ll try and reproduce that as often as possible.
“And hopefully at the end of the year, when we do the math, we will have won the Constructors’ title.”
