Charles Leclerc was left \u201cvery happy\u201d after claiming third place on the grid for the Belgian Grand Prix, with the Monegasque hailing his effort as a \u201creally good lap\u201d.<\/p>\n
On a weekend in which Ferrari<\/a> are running a revised rear suspension<\/a>, Leclerc<\/a> went one better than his fourth place result earlier on in Saturday\u2019s Sprint<\/a> to be the best of the rest behind the McLarens<\/a> of Lando Norris<\/a> and Oscar Piastri<\/a> in Qualifying.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very happy today \u2013 it\u2019s strange to say that because it\u2019s still three-tenths [back] and it\u2019s only a third place, but I did not expect it,\u201d Leclerc reflected after the session.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought we were quite a lot more back. We knew that we had something more in the car obviously with the upgrade this weekend, but we still struggled yesterday. But this was a really good lap.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very happy with the lap, very happy with how the car felt, so it\u2019s good that we put everything together for Quali.\u201d<\/p>\n When quizzed on what he put it down to, Leclerc responded: \u201cIt obviously takes a bit of time to maximise those upgrades that we put on the car, so there were some little things that we changed, but nothing major.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was all about putting everything together. I\u2019ve felt comfortable with the car since FP1, so it\u2019s good to have a Qualifying<\/a> where you look back and know you haven\u2019t left anything on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n During Saturday\u2019s Sprint, Leclerc initially overtook Norris for third before later losing the place again. With this in mind, the 25-year-old is unsure whether a podium will be possible in Sunday\u2019s Grand Prix, in which he will line up one place ahead of Max Verstappen<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know yet but, for sure, their race pace this morning looked very strong,\u201d said Leclerc. \u201cI couldn\u2019t keep up with them. But again, with the small changes that we\u2019ve done, I hope that this gives us the upper hand in the main race.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc was left \u201cvery happy\u201d after claiming third place on the grid for the Belgian Grand Prix,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-26517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}