Charles Leclerc put in another impressive performance as he finished P4 in the F1 Las Vegas GP for Scuderia Ferrari. He was one of many drivers to benefit from the double disqualification for McLaren.
In a wild and chaotic start, the 28-year-old dropped behind Ollie Bearman on the first lap after starting 9th. However, he immediately regained P9 by passing Fernando Alonso into turn 14. The downfall of Liam Lawson moved him up another spot.
Brilliant moves on the brakes on Bearman and Hadjar moved him up to P5 at the end of the first stint. Before that he overtook Oscar Piastri after the Aussie got deep at turn 12 and left himself exposed.
Unfortunately for Charles Leclerc, he fell behind the McLaren driver thanks to an undercut from the Woking-based team. Nonetheless an overcut worked on his former teammate Carlos Sainz.
Charles Leclerc on his F1 Las Vegas GP and confusion over the strategy
Before the bombshell came through that the McLarens got disqualified, Charles Leclerc spoke in the print media pen about his F1 Las Vegas GP.
Asked if he felt P6 — that would become P4 — was better than expected, the 7-time podium finisher in 2025 was not especially happy.
“I mean not really, it’s P6 so it’s still very frustrating to only finish P6 when you start P9.
“On the other hand if I look at my race it’s been a bit of a crazy race, I had to take massive risks to overtake because we were very very slow in the straights. So on that side it was an entertaining race.
“But then I don’t really understand what happened around the pit stop but it seems that we’ve lost quite a few places. So we’ll look back at whether we could have done something better there.”
Leclerc added a review of strategy will be required as he lost out to Oscar Piastri following his pass on lap 12. A 3-lap undercut by McLaren did a lot of damage.
“Yeah I mean it’s more with Oscar as well because I think Oscar was behind me after the first stint.
“And then obviously he undercut us so this is something we’ve got to look back but I’m not so sure of what I’m saying, I think that in the car I was surprised to see Oscar in front which I thought he was behind me before the stop.
“So yeah, we’ll review that.”
Charles Leclerc on full push during the F1 Las Vegas GP and trying to attack Oscar Piastri and Kimi Antonelli
With a higher downforce rear wing, Leclerc said he was driving like an “animal” during the race to keep up. A lack of speed on the straights meant he was having to absolutely send it in the twisty part of the middle sector to keep DRS. It meant the Ferrari driver towards the end as degradation kicked in, missing out on the podium to Kimi Antonelli by 0.2s in the end.
The 8-time race winner explained how hard he was having to push to be competitive.
“I was pushing 200% the whole race, I don’t think I left anything on the table.
“So no I just think they had a bit more pace towards the end but I also had pushed a lot behind them to try and get as close as possible. I had to because otherwise I would lose DRS and without the DRS I was dead slow.
“It was a bit of a tough race to manage but yeah I don’t think I could have done anything better.
“It was just a bit of a shame to get stuck behind Oscar that had the DRS exactly [on Antonelli] at the point where I was catching up Oscar and that made it very difficult for us.”
No surprise at the lack of endurance from the hard tyre
A stunning drive from Kimi Antonelli saw the Italian take a brilliant P3 at the F1 Las Vegas GP. From P17, a one-stop ultimately got him a podium. He pitted on lap 2 behind a VSC, doing 48 laps on the hard. A 1:33.998 with three laps to go was the third quickest lap of the race.
What did surprise Charles Leclerc was the fact the medium worked so well. He went to lap 24 on them and showed strong pace, although not quite at the level of race winner Max Verstappen who also went long.
“Yeah I mean not surprised that the hard will hold on, quite surprised that the medium was so good for so long. But the hard was as expected.”
