Ferrari
Charles Leclerc
“In some races, things just don’t align and today, that was the case for me. We were really unlucky with the timing of the VCS and SC. I couldn’t take advantage of the first one, and during the second, we didn’t have the right tyres available, but I’ve got no regrets on this score. P6 is not that bad considering how difficult a weekend it has been for us, but this is not the result we are aiming for.
“Our real focus has to be on improving our qualifying performance, because in the race, the car is fast. Heading to Monaco now, we expect it to be a challenging weekend. It’s a circuit that will expose our car’s weaknesses. It is very specific and you have to run the car differently than anywhere else, so I hope we will capitalise on that and bring home the best result possible.”
Lewis Hamilton
"Today I felt much more at one with the car, something I’d been chasing since the Sprint in China. Everything came together: the strategy, the pit stops, the balance, it all worked in harmony and allowed us to recover strongly from our qualifying position.
“There’s still work to do, especially over one lap, but if we can keep building on days like this, we’ll be in the mix for podiums. Grazie mille tifosi: your support means the world and I hope we made you proud today.”
Fred Vasseur, Team Principal
“The positive side of today was that our pace was strong from start to finish. We had a good strategy and the pit stops were well executed. Of course, there is some frustration because if we had qualified better, we could have finished higher up the order. It’s been three or four races now where we have seen this difference between quali and race pace. We must work on that, but I believe that today’s result was the best we could hope for. Lewis drove a very solid race, always running at a strong pace, pulling off some nice overtakes.
“As for Charles, the Virtual and real Safety Cars did him no favours and I can understand his frustration. But at the time the Safety Car came out, there were still too many laps to go to fit the Softs and I think leaving him out on the Hards was the right decision. In the closing stages, we asked Charles to give back position to Alex Albon, because it was very close and if he had been given a penalty, we would have lost four or five places.”
