Leclerc had an amazing start. Despite standing forth on the grid, he took the first place immediately. The polesitter and race winner George Russell had a bad start, but these two had amazing battles in the first 10 laps, swapping first place offering a thrilling battles.

While both Mercedes’ cars pitted during Virtual Safety Car caused by Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar because of technical issue, Ferrari kept both their drivers on track. They made the same decision during second Virtual Safety Car as Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas retied his car near the pit entry.

Ferraris then pitted later in the race during standard conditions, which lead to Leclerc’s third position finish. Quoted by the official F1 website, he said right after the race: “P3 is the best we could do today”. While also adding that he had fun at the first part of the race. “It looked like Mercedes maybe had a bit more pace than us today, but maybe not as much as what we saw yesterday so that’s a good thing. I don’t think we would have won.” he admitted.

Leclerc also stressed that it seems they are much better in races than in qualifying compared to Mercedes. “Today I was quite surprised that we were on as far as what we expected before, but on my side, it’s been quite a poor race in terms of performance. I was quite slow all race long, we’ve got to look at that.” he evaluated their performance.

According to his words, the car felt very strange in general, so for the next race in Shanghai they have to modify their set-up window. Overall, it was a good race for him: “It was good to be first, there was lots of expectation on us, and we delivered so that was good.”