Leclerc: I want to thank Carlos, he made my life easier

Sainz might have helped Leclerc towards the end of the race as he sternly defended third place from Perez, but the Spaniard was lobbying the Ferrari pit wall to switch him with his teammate at the start as he felt he had more speed, something the team refused.

In the end, Sainz had no way to keep Perez behind, but once the Mexican was past and set his sights on Leclerc, the gap was too big to close with the remaining number of laps.

"In the end I tried absolutely everything to defend from Checo but couldn’t hold on to that place on the podium," said Sainz, who finished fourth but then dropped to sixth following a post race penalty based on the protest lodged by Aston Martin.

As for Leclerc, he said: "It’s good to be back on the podium. Friday and today we maximised what we have and the upgrades we introduced this weekend worked well. The team has done an excellent job and we will keep pushing in this direction.

He added: "I also want to thank Carlos as he made my life a bit easier by putting up a great defence against Checo. I was watching on the big screen, it was very exciting!

"Now we go to Silverstone which, with Spielberg, is among my favourite circuits. Hopefully we can take advantage of the new upgrades we have on the car again and offer a bit more of a challenge to Red Bull in the next round," Leclerc concluded.

Ferrari Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur summed up the team's weekend: "Today’s strong result for the team, added to yesterday’s podium with Carlos [Sprint Race], proves we are working in the right direction.

"If we look back, we had a good race in Canada and today we confirmed the progress made on a completely different track layout with a different surface.

"We still need to make another step forward if we want to fight with Red Bull and we are working hard to achieve that," Vasseur admitted. "Charles drove very well today and I think he would have been probably safe from the attacks from Perez towards the end. However Carlos also played his part, fighting Checo making him lose time.

"Now we go immediately to Silverstone, on another completely different track on which we’ll need to confirm our current form to keep fighting with Mercedes and Aston Martin.

"We are doing a good job both on track and in Maranello, we will bring more upgrades in the UK and we want to keep fighting in what I think will be a long battle all the way to the end of the season," the Frenchman concluded.