United States Grand Prix – Charles Leclerc’s comeback
Starting from 12th place after engine penalties, Charles Leclerc was able to take advantage of the incidents happening around him and his racing intelligence to move up to 3rd position.
If the Ferrari had shown excellent pace at the beginning of the weekend, Leclerc’s chances of victory had diminished even before Saturday’s qualifying session when Ferrari announced that they had changed several components of the Monegasque’s engine. Qualifying 2nd, just a few thousandths of a second behind his teammate Carlos Sainz, Leclerc was ultimately relegated to the 12th position on the starting grid.
However, the former Sauber driver would encounter far less misfortune than his garage neighbor at the start of the race. While Sainz saw his race ruined in the very first corner due to a collision with George Russell, Leclerc managed to navigate through the chaos and had already gained two positions by the end of the first lap. The driver with the number 16 made impressive progress within the 5th lap, overtaking both Lando Norris and Pierre Gasly. 7 laps later, the Scuderia driver successfully passed his former teammate Sebastian Vettel to claim 6th position.
Despite all these great overtakes, Leclerc was still over fifteen seconds behind the race leader, ruling him out of any chance of a regular victory. It was the safety car caused by Valtteri Bottas’ off-track incident that allowed the winner of the first Grand Prix of the season to get back in the game. While his rivals had already made their pit stops a few laps earlier, the Italian team decided to push Leclerc further with his medium tires. This decision enabled the Monegasque driver to make a pit stop under the safety car period. This significant time gain allowed him to overtake Lance Stroll and George Russell’s cars. He now found himself in 4th position, just behind Sergio Perez’s Red Bull.
Facing the high top speed of Adrian Newey’s machine, Charles Leclerc knew that in order to surpass his rival for second place in the championship, he would have to show some audacity. That’s exactly what he did on the 30th lap of the race, diving inside Perez at turn 12. While the Mexican had started to close the door, the Monegasque squeezed through a tiny gap to take the 3rd position.
If the latter took advantage of Max Verstappen’s catastrophic pit stop to regain second place on the track, the Dutchman was too fast for Leclerc who had to give in and settle for third place.
Charles Leclerc returned to the Canal+ microphone to talk about his battles with the two Red Bulls: « It was a bit on the edge, but they were super fast on the straights once again, so it was very difficult to overtake, even with the DRS. I knew that I could take a bit more risks with Checo because I’m fighting with him for the championship. With Verstappen, it was more complicated because he had the DRS, so it wasn’t easy to keep him behind. »
Leclerc explains his inability to catch up with Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes due to excessive tire degradation: « Unfortunately, once again it was a race where we struggled a bit with tire degradation towards the end. Starting 12th, it’s good to finish 3rd and earn some points, but we still need to work on improving this degradation. »
The Ferrari driver managed to climb 9 positions during this United States Grand Prix, but most importantly, he finished ahead of Sergio Perez, with whom he is competing for the runner-up position in the Drivers’ World Championship. Leclerc now has 267 points on the scoreboard, which is 2 more than Perez.
