Leclerc: We were pretty lucky

Earning his second top-three finish of the season at Silverstone, Leclerc was a beneficiary of the two Mercedes' late tyre issues, but suggests he would not have been in that position had Haas' Romain Grosjean not been running long in his first tyre stint; getting his car between the Monegasque and the faster McLarens in the process.

“I think we were pretty lucky in having the Haas in between McLaren and myself,” he said afterwards. “If without that I would have been able to keep them behind or not, I don’t know, but it would have definitely been a lot more difficult.

“We were actually quite worried for the race. It wasn’t easy today, especially during the safety car periods and then for the restarts after the safety car, I was struggling massively, as I couldn’t put any temperature into the tyres. The guys behind were actually pretty close.

“Romain was on used mediums and was putting me under a lot of pressure — that was the trickiest part of the race. But once the tyres were in temperature it wasn’t actually that tricky. I was expecting worse, so we’ve done quite a good job, I think, with the balance of the car. It was very nice to drive today.”

“It’s definitely a lot more unexpected for this year, that’s for sure. We know we’ve been lucky to get to the podium but, apart from that, we’ve been satisfied with the way we’ve been working throughout the weekend.

“For sure we don’t want to be fighting for fourth place for so long, but, at the moment, that’s what the car is capable of. I think we extracted absolutely everything out of the strategy and the car. It’s a very unexpected podium, so I’m more satisfied than last year with third place.

“I’m very happy with it, especially with the tyre management. It was not easy — we had a very aggressive downforce level coming here, so we had quite a lot of speed down the straights but it was very difficult in the corners. We were quite worried for the race, especially for the tyre degradation, but we did quite a good job on that.”