Australian Grand Prix winner Charles Leclerc hailed his team for producing a fast car after Ferrari stormed to the most dominant win of the Formula One season at Albert Park on Sunday.
Starting from pole, the 24-year-old from Monaco crossed the finish line more than 20 seconds ahead of Red Bull’s runner-up Sergio Perez to claim his fourth career win in style.
Having gone winless in the last two years as Ferrari struggled, Leclerc has now won two of the last three races, including the season-opener in Bahrain, to emerge as the early championship favourite.
“It feels incredible ... because now I know underneath me I’ve got a car that is capable of winning,” Leclerc told reporters. “I know that it’s in the car and I just have to do the job, so the mindset is a little bit different this year.”
Leclerc has now taken a 34-point lead in the drivers’ championship ahead of George Russell, who was third for Mercedes.
Ferrari head to their home Italian Grand Prix in two weeks with huge momentum, but Leclerc tried to clamp down on the growing hype.
“I don’t want to focus too much on the championship for now,” he said. “Italy will be incredible, but we need to approach the race weekend just like we approached the first three weekends.
“I think it’s extremely important not to put on ourselves under extra pressure and not try to overdo things.”
I’d rather fix a fast car than try to make a reliable, slow one fast. We need to get on top of it. You could see the front tyres open up quite quickly in the race and that’s usually the sign that you haven’t got your balance totally tuned in.
— Red Bull team boss, Christian Horner
Ferrari’s celebrations were tempered by a crash for Leclerc’s teammate Carlos Sainz soon after a terrible start from ninth on the grid on hard tyres.
After a skid through grass, he spun across the track and thudded into a wall to finish his race quickly.
That was preceded by set-up problems with his car during qualifying on Saturday.
Sainz said he made a mistake with his tyres but was already disrupted by having his steering wheel changed just before his installation lap.
“We haven’t been great this weekend, it’s been a bit of a disaster so we need to learn from it,” said the Spaniard.
Mercedes staged a mini-revival after a gloomy start to the Formula One season as Russell grabbed his maiden podium for the team and Lewis Hamilton finished fourth.
Though Mercedes’ bouncing W13 car was still well off Ferrari’s pace, with third-placed Russell some 25 seconds behind winner Charles Leclerc, Hamilton hailed a “great result” for the team at Albert Park.
“In this weekend we've had so many difficult moments with the car,” the seven-time world champion said. “So to get ourselves fifth and sixth in qualifying and to have progressed like we have and have the reliability ... we definitely didn’t expect to have a third and fourth.
“We’ll take these points and keep pushing.”
Russell said Sunday was a pleasant surprise given Mercedes were “probably” the fifth fastest team behind McLaren and Alpine.
“Yet here we are standing P3 (third position). I only just realised, someone just told me I’m P2 in the championship which is just crazy to think.
“We’ve got to be really proud of the job we’ve done so far with the lack of performance we have.
“We believe we can get there but it’s not going to happen overnight and its going to be a number of races before we start closing the gap.”
Russell, who started sixth on the grid, capitalised on a safety car deployment to change tyres which allowed him to rejoin the race ahead of Hamilton.
Though Hamilton was within striking distance of Russell in the closing laps, he said he could not fight for third because his engine was overheating.
Russell is now nine points ahead of his champion teammate in an early season surprise.
“Obviously everybody wants to finish ahead of their teammate but Lewis and I have no interest in battling it out for P5, P6 and we want to work together to claw that gap back,” he said.
“There’s no hard feelings if he’s ahead of me and no hard feelings if I’m ahead of him.”
Meanwhile, world champion Max Verstappen’s second retirement in three races has left Red Bull on the back foot in the Formula One championship — and team principal Christian Horner fuming at the growing gap with Ferrari.
Verstappen’s car ground to a halt with nearly 20 laps to race.
Red Bull have now racked up three retirements in the first three races, with both Verstappen and Perez failing to finish the season-opener in Bahrain.
Ferrari are 39 points clear of second-placed Mercedes in the constructors championship, with Red Bull a further 10 points adrift.
“Desperately frustrating. I think as Max said, we didn't have the pace to race Charles today, they were in a league of their own,” said Horner. “But frustrating not to be bagging those points.
“We can’t accept DNFs (did not finish) but we need to understand what the issue is and address it.”
Red Bull blamed a fuel system problem for the retirements in Bahrain, and Horner suspected Verstappen’s failure in Melbourne might also be fuel-related.
More concerning was the car’s performance gap versus Ferrari, which has taken Red Bull by surprise.
“I’d rather fix a fast car than try to make a reliable, slow one fast. We need to get on top of it,” said Horner. “You could see the front tyres open up quite quickly in the race and that’s usually the sign that you haven’t got your balance totally tuned in.”
With no points booked for a second race this season, Verstappen has fallen to sixth in the drivers’ championship, 46 points behind Leclerc.
Verstappen complained about his car’s performance all week, and said he knew there was a problem brewing.
“We are already miles behind so I don’t even want to think about the championship fight at the moment,” said the Dutchman.
“I think it’s more important to finish races. Of course today was in general just a bad day again.
“But we didn’t even finish the race so it’s pretty frustrating and unacceptable.”
Verstappen’s retirement paved the way for Perez’s runner-up finish, though the Mexican had to fight his way past Russell and Hamilton to secure his 16th podium.
“Ferrari were on another level,” said Perez.
“I think we were too poor with our balance ... We seem to be a bit harder on the tyres.”
— Reuters
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