Ferrari impressed by Leclerc’s ‘great gesture’ at Monaco F1 podium

On a weekend that Ferrari enjoyed its strongest performance of the season so far, Leclerc missed out on the chance to win his home race following a driveshaft hub failure on his way to the grid.

Leclerc had taken a sensational pole position but crashed on his final lap of qualifying, an incident which was later identified as being directly related to his race-ending failure.

Despite his huge disappointment, the Monegasque joined in with the team celebrations under the podium after Sainz finished second, something which impressed Binotto.

“The car and the team is developing in the right direction,” said Binotto.

“It was very positive for Carlos, his first podium with Ferrari, Carlos is doing very well since the start f the season, integrating with the team, getting the confidence with the car, and second place will not be the last one and we will get more in the future.

“[What is] very positive is Charles being under the podium, I think that was a really great gesture from him, showing he was there to celebrate Carlos but celebrate the team as well.

“It shows the team spirit we’ve got at the moment, we all believe in the project and are all convinced in the future will become stronger and stronger.”

Leclerc admitted that he was gutted to miss out on the opportunity to fight for what he feels could end up being Ferrari’s one and only victory chance this season.

“Of course it is difficult because it’s at home,” he explained. “It’s not every day that we have the chance to be in such a good place.

“But at the end it’s like this, it’s part of motorsports. And these things can happen. As Mattia said, that’s what I will try to remember from this weekend, all the positive signs we’ve had.

“We are coming back from quite far, if we see last year, so we’ve done a good job by improving races after races.

“Here it might be a one-off to be fighting for the win, but that doesn’t mean that there has been no progress.

“We are on the good road, we are working well. Surely the luck was not on my side this weekend and it’s life.

“I’ll just get over it, think about Baku, I’m very, very motivated to be back in the car and to hopefully have a very good result.”