The Ferrari driver was one of the few who managed to drive the race with one pit stop. The Monegasque started on Medium and after 18 laps changed it to Hard.

Charles rated his own result highly and said that after a difficult weekend he was very happy with the 4^th place.

"I'm so happy today,” Leclerc told Sky F1.

"I mean, for me it feels like a victory, and of course it's not looking good once we call a fourth place a victory, but at the moment it's where we are at."

"And last year I think my weakest point was the tyre management, and I've worked very hard, and every time I work and that I see the results are still on track, it's a huge satisfaction."

"And to get a fourth place today, I expected to go eighth in the best case scenario this morning or further down the grid. So extremely happy with this fourth place."

It is noteworthy that in the second segment, Leclerc have managed to update the record time of the lap several times and even drive in P3, but he still missed Lewis Hamilton. Also the driver admitted he was mystified about the pace he was able to achieve and thought he could pass the other Mercedes – Valtteri Bottas.

"We were very happy and to be honest, we need to analyse to understand why we were so quick, because I don't really understand for now. Honestly, I don't really understand where we managed to achieve this performance, because even at the end of the run with the hard, I was doing very well," Charles said.

"Even at a certain point I even thought about attacking Bottas, something I thought couldn't happen this year. I tried to resist Hamilton because it's right to choose when to do it. At the beginning I gave him space, because I was busy doing my race."

"In the end I was on the podium and I believed in it until the end. The podium would have been unexpected and exceptional, but in the end I couldn't defend myself."