Charles Leclerc: Ferrari maximised what we had in Russian F1 GP

Charles Leclerc says he was pleased to have “maximised” Ferrari’s performance at the Russian Grand Prix after finishing sixth.

Leclerc made a strong start from 11th on the grid and a late pit stop allowed him to rejoin ahead of the Renault of Esteban Ocon - who had been stuck behind Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel for a number of laps.

After tricky races on home soil at Monza and Mugello for Ferrari, Leclerc was pleased to have taken a step forward at the Sochi Autodrom.

“Very happy about today,” Leclerc said. “Again, from the beginning of the season it’s difficult to be happy with P6 but it’s the way it is.

“We maximised what we had today. Yesterday I was frustrated about what happened in quali, but at the end I don’t think we could have done better, even with a better quali.

“So happy with the weekend, no we need to understand what we did different to be so much better in the race than Mugello, for example, but it’s a good step forward.”

Leclerc confirmed Ferrari plans to bring further upgrades to the Eifel Grand Prix on F1’s return to the Nurburgring in two weeks' time.

“We brought some small upgrades for this weekend, Leclerc added. “I don’t think it’s the explanation of all the performance jump we have done. But it has definitely gone in the right direction and we should have a bigger upgrade for the next grand prix.

“Some tracks we thought we’d be good and it was pretty bad, some others, like here we will go pretty bad and we went a lot better than we thought. So I’m confused about this, now I’m just taking weekend-by-weekend and will try to extract the maximum from the weekend.”

Leclerc sits seventh in the drivers' championship, just eight points behind fourth-placed Lando Norris.