Leclerc: We don’t have any regrets

Leclerc set himself up for a good result at the Austrian Grand Prix after qualifying second and splitting the McLarens of Lando Norris (on pole) and Oscar Piastri (third) on the starting grid of Sunday's race in Spielberg.

The Monegasque launched an attack on Norris at the start, but the latter defended well, which opened the door for Piastri to take second place from the #16 Ferrari.

After that, the Papaya cars disappeared into the lead, never worried about their rivals but instead having an intense fight in a race of their own, while Leclerc could only finish third, almost 20s behind second-placed Piastri, while seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton took fourth.

Ferrari had a major upgrade on their SF-25 with a new floor and diffuser, and Leclerc claimed these new parts delivered for the Scuderia.

"I rate our weekend as a team really well," he said in Ferrari's race report. "We brought some upgrades, which helped us to take a step forward and start closing the gap to McLaren.

"Unfortunately, they were just faster today," he lamented, adding: "In the first corner, I wanted to close in on Lando (Norris), but that left the door open for Oscar (Piastri), who was able to pass me for second place. I pushed a lot on the first stint and had quite a bit of degradation, but that’s part of the game.

"We don’t have any regrets today," Leclerc insisted. "We gave it everything and extracted the maximum from our race.

"We will continue to work hard to make more progress with the aim of getting back onto the top step of the podium. That’s our main priority, and the whole team deserves it," he concluded.

As for Hamilton, he struggled with his SF-25 yet again and did not have any pace during the race to make any impact, settling for fourth in the end.

He commented: "It’s been a solid weekend for the team—we continued to improve our qualifying pace, and the team did a great job throughout.

"We didn’t have the race pace we expected, but still, we came away with some solid points and a podium, which is something we can be proud of. We’ll analyze the data carefully to understand where improvements can be made.

"Thank you to everyone at the track and at the factory for their hard work and commitment. We remain focused, and I’m looking forward to my first home Grand Prix with Ferrari," the Briton concluded.

Fred Vasseur was absent from the Ferrari pit wall in Spielberg as he had to leave for personal reasons and was replaced by his deputy, Jérôme D'Ambrosio.

D'Ambrosio commented on Ferrari's Austrian Grand Prix; he said: "We can be happy with this result. For a while now, Fred’s been saying we just need to put everything together and have a clean weekend, and that’s what we did.

"Today, in a clean race, both our drivers ran a very similar pace," he went on. "Obviously, the gap to McLaren is still big, especially during the race, but we’ll keep on pushing to close it down. The gaps between the teams change from race to race, so you just have to focus on yourself and do the best you can.

"Today, we moved back up to second in the Constructors’ even if by an extremely small margin, and everyone in the team is keen to keep pushing to improve and do even better."

D'Ambrosio reflected on being in Vasseur's hot seat; he added: "As for stepping into Fred’s shoes, the reality is that in this team we have a lot of good people who know what they’re doing, and so it didn’t really change anything in the process.

"The team operated well, and the race was pretty straightforward from our perspective," he concluded.

Vasseur has been in the spotlight recently with speculation surrounding his future at Ferrari, his sudden departure from Austria not helping in that regard.