Ferrari
Charles Leclerc
“Yesterday, I knew that I was sacrificing qualifying in order to have a better race on Sunday, but I didn’t expect to find myself standing on the podium, so I’m happy about that.
“The first two stints were really positive today, the last stint on the Medium was a bit more tricky, but then we had the Safety Car that gave us the opportunity to fit Soft tyres again and we took advantage of it.
“We still have a lot of work to do and are not yet as fast as we want to be, but now we head home to reset and push to come back stronger in the coming races.”
Lewis Hamilton
“Today was definitely not what I was hoping for. I felt good going into the race, after a pretty good qualifying and the car performing better. But the balance felt off throughout the race and we lacked pace from the start. We don’t have an explanation for it, so we’ll have to go away and look into the data and any underlying issues. Congratulations to Charles, he did a great job and fully deserved the podium.”
Fred Vasseur, Team Principal
“It’s always good to finish on the podium, and this result, following the one in Monaco confirms we’re building momentum. We’ve now had three strong races in a row and have moved back up to second place in the Constructors’ championship, which is a positive step.
“Today’s race was quite intense. Like most teams, we struggled to clearly understand the performance delta between the Medium and Soft tyres. In the end, we saw better pace and consistency on the Soft, which played into our hands with Charles at the end. Of course the Safety Car also helped, as it allowed us to get ahead of Verstappen, who was on Hards. It was a good recovery, and the strategy worked.
“Lewis also had strong pace until the final stint, where he reported some balance issues. We’ll look into it, but it was important that still managed to bring home some points.
“Since Miami, we’ve shown consistent progress, apart from qualifying in Imola. McLaren is still ahead, but we’re closing the gap step by step. We need to keep improving, and stay in the fight.”
