Charles Leclerc “not happy” with losing race from first again

Leclerc qualified second on Saturday but was bumped up to first place on the grid after Max Verstappen was dropped three places for ignoring yellow flags after Valtteri Bottas’ crashed in Q3.
 
The Monegasque led the opening stages of the race comfortably but Ferrari opted to put him on a two-stop strategy with the idea of having the pace on fresh tyres at the end to work his way back up.
 
But the strategy didn’t go to plan as Leclerc finished fourth behind the one-stop strategies of Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel and Bottas despite him feeling it was the right call at the time.

“Well disappointed I am, of course,” Leclerc said (quoted by Racer).

“Every time you start first you always want to win and the two last times I started first I didn’t win, so I’m not happy with that. I think it’s pretty clear why and we will learn from this.”

“To be completely honest we wanted to cover from (Alex) Albon, which we did.

“And then from then on, I think it was very difficult to do better because with the two-stop it was very difficult to stay behind the cars and to overtake at the end even with a very good pit stop.

“I just did my race and obviously I also thought in the car that at that time it was probably the right thing to do to cover Albon’s position so I was not too concerned.

“Then I realized later in the race it was not the right choice, but there was no reasons for me to be angry on the radio.”

Leclerc had previously qualified on pole in Russia and led part of the race before Mercedes went on to claim another 1-2 of the season.