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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 on Sunday.
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 approach the first three weekends. I think it’s extremely important not to put on ourselves extra pressure and not try to overdo things.”
Ferrari’s celebrations were tempered by a crash for Leclerc’s partner driver Carlos Sainz soon after he suffered a terrible start from ninth on the grid on hard tyres.
Back foot
World champion Max Verstappen’s second retirement in three races has left Red Bull on the back foot 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.
“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 and make a reliable, slow one fast. We need to get on top of it,” said Horner.
No hard feelings
Lewis Hamilton finished fourth, and though he 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 team mate in an early season surprise.
“Obviously everybody wants to finish ahead of their team mate 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.”