"He is the miracle man" - Charles Leclerc's stunning qualifying lap at Austrian GP leaves fans impressed

F1 fans could not help but rave about the performance of Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, calling him a 'miracle man' after his P2 finish at the 2023 Austrian GP qualifying session.

The Monegasque driver was back to his best in the one-lap qualifying session for the main race, albeit he missed out on the pole position to Max Verstappen by a margin of 0.048s. In a heavily upgraded Ferrari, Charles Leclerc looked like his old self as he was once again the only driver in the dying moments of the session to challenge the Red Bull driver.

His P2 finish earned him praise from all quarters, especially fans on social media, with one even hailing him as the 'miracle man':

"Once again he is the miracle man. Just wasting his best years in a team that sux."

Here are some more reactions:

Charles Leclerc analyzes his qualifying performance at the Red Bull Ring

The Ferrari driver was happy with a clean session on Friday afternoon in the qualifying for the main race. He also stated that he was more focused on the race pace on Sunday after the new upgrades they introduced on the car this weekend.

As per F1.com, Charles Leclerc told the media:

"It feels good to finally have a clean qualifying again and to be back on the front row. The feeling from the car has been a bit better in the last three races and then in Q1 and Q2, it was all about building up to that lap in Q3 and I managed to put everything into that last lap and got very close to Max.

"We hadn’t expected to be that close to the Red Bull so it’s a good step forward and I would like to thank everyone back at the factory for all the work they have done in the last few weeks in order to bring an updated package at Spielberg, earlier than planned.

"It’s really impressive and helped us to perform well today. Now we need to confirm that in the races, tomorrow and Sunday. Starting from the Sprint we need to focus on consistency and we will see on Sunday if we have the same race pace as in Montreal."

Charles Leclerc will have another opportunity to take pole position on Saturday in the Sprint quali for the Sprint race later that day, which will be a good indicator for Sunday's race pace.