Charles Leclerc admitted that Ferrari knew Silverstone was going to be one of their "worst tracks" after they struggled to convert their qualifying performance into a podium. It was one of the worst results for Ferrari this season, with Leclerc finishing P9 and Carlos Sainz P10 despite starting on the second row of the grid. Leclerc said to media, including RacingNews365.com , that Ferrari was prepared for a tough race: "We knew that this track was going to be one of our worst tracks just because of the high speed corners. This is one of the weakness of the car." The Monegasque pitted after just 18 laps for Hard tyres and found himself in the middle of pack, then went back to Mediums when the Safety Car came out. At the restart, he struggled to match those on the Soft tyre around him, which he explained was down to their lack of pace. "Honestly, not having the pace puts us in a situation that then is very tricky to manage whatever situation there is, so then it looks like bad luck," he said. "The timing of the safety car was definitely not the best for us and was beneficial for many other drivers, but at the end that's life. We just didn't have the pace."
Leclerc: We were not expecting McLaren to be so strong
Leclerc added that the timing of the Safety Car was unlucky and enabled others to pit for better tyres, despite the fact that Ferrari originally pitted early to cover off George Russell. He explained: "It's not like we degraded the tyres more than others, it's just that Mercedes and McLaren were stronger than us. "I managed to keep George behind for the first part of the race, then we pitted for George not to pit and undercut us, but that was too early. "Then we had the Safety Car once I started pushing on the Hard, and we got undercut by most most of the people." While Ferrari expected McLaren to be strong after their result with Lando Norris in Austria, Leclerc said the Woking squad are exceeding expectations with their performance. "We knew they [McLaren] are strong in high speed corners, we could see that in Austria," he said. "We were expecting them to be strong here, but probably not as strong as what we've seen."
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