Charles Leclerc praised an “amazing performance” as he and Sauber continued their recent run of form at Formula 1’s Austrian Grand Prix.
Leclerc scored points in four of the five events preceding the sport’s visit to the Red Bull Ring, and his hopes of continuing such a run appeared slim after a gearbox penalty relegated him to 17th on the grid.
Leclerc went off on the opening lap and fell to 19th position but gradually worked his way through the pack and profited from trouble elsewhere to take ninth.
“Yeah it was great race for us,” Leclerc said. “We were not on the best strategy but to be honest everyone was on the same strategy as us or worse, apart from Marcus [Ericsson] on Softs.
“So more or less we had to pit when the VSC came out. It was very difficult to finish the race with the Softs after that.
“I did a small mistake at the beginning of the race which put us a bit on the backfoot but it’s an amazing performance, we came back very quickly, we overtook very quickly also.
“We came back to P9 from last after two laps so it’s a great performance from the whole team.”
Leclerc explained after qualifying that his grid penalty meant he would take a riskier strategy on the opening lap – and such an approach resulted in his off at Turn 5.
“I knew I had to push very hard in the first laps because of starting from P18 I had to take some risks,” he said.
“I tried to overtake Pierre I think. Somehow I don’t know what really happened this lap but lots of cars went wide in this corner, I think Pierre and Marcus nearly went in the gravel like me.
“But I just lost it because I tried to out-brake Pierre who also braked quite late so it was just too much so I had to go wide.”
