Not the race Scuderia Ferrari expected, as they showed a very good pace in the last few days at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Saudi Arabia. Ferrari’s Monegasque, Charles Leclerc, could not maintain his qualifying result [P4], during today’s race, and ended P7; penalised by the red flags and the standing restarts, Leclerc struggled to warm up the hard tyres and lost a lot of positions during the first and the second restarts of the race.

After the Saudi Arabian GP, he said: “It’s a shame. First part of the race I was really competitive. I was trying to save the tyres as much as possible, but it’s not like the three guys in front were pulling away. Then there was the VSC and I thought “ well that’s good for us” but 4/5 laps late, red flag and we lost a bit of positions there. Then we had to put on the hard tyres for the restart, and I don’t really know what happened there but we struggled massively warming up the hard tyres. At every restart we had today, I lost a lot of positions because of the hard tyres.''

Although Ferrari expected a better weekend, the solid work of both their drivers, paid back with other important points for the third place in the constructors' championship. Sainz and Leclerc, battled several times during the race and they both enjoyed it. On his last laps battle with team-mate Carlos Sainz, Leclerc said: “Yes Carlos was behind at first, and then in front, when he overtook me while I was struggling with my hard tyres. But then I had a quite good pace and I managed to overtake him in the last two laps of the race. It was a good battle, I think we enjoyed it, both of us. Yes, the pace was strong, but looking at the result we can only be disappointed because we had much more power to achieve a better result.”