Increasingly Charles Leclerc is clearly the real deal, again he delivered a mighty performance with some excellent overtakes to finish the Russian Grand Prix as the Best of the Rest in seventh place behind the six cars of the three big teams.
After a slow start on Friday, Leclerc built up momentum and found the sweet spot by the time qualifying and race day came about.
The soon to be Ferrari driver summed up his afternoon at Sochi Autodrom, “It was an amazing race. It was very good that I could get past Esteban [Ocon] and Kevin [Magnussen] very quickly because we knew it would be very difficult to overtake on this track.”
“Then to be in front of them was a huge advantage, they straight away lost quite a bit by being behind and they couldn’t really follow so it was good to see and it was a great race for us.”
A highlight of Leclerc’s race was his ballsy overtake on Magnussen on the outside of the Haas through the never-ending Turn 3.
The Monegasque driver acknowledged, “I’ve never raced here before, but it was a great overtake and Kevin stayed fair also so it was good to see. It was on the limit but everything went well.”
With seven points finishes so far this year, Leclerc lies 15th in the championship, but for many fans Leclerc teaming up with Sebastian Vettel at Ferrari next year cannot come soon enough.