“They were incredibly quick”: Charles Leclerc discusses his battle with McLaren’s Lando Norris after earning a podium finish at the 2024 F1 Imola GP

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc claimed that the McLaren of Lando Norris was 'incredibly quick' in the main race on Sunday after he finished in P3. The Monagasque driver never looked in contention for the race win but was pushing for P2 in the middle part of the race and even closed the gap to Norris to under a second.

However, the McLaren driver quickly found his groove and was able to pull away from Leclerc, going on to challenge Max Verstappen for the race win, but fell short by 0.762s to the Red Bull driver.

In his post-race interview with F1TV, Charles Leclerc mentioned that he wasn't entirely happy to finish P3, saying:

"Of course, I'm only very happy when I win. We were fast at the beginning of the stint on the hard. I tried to push to put some pressure on Lando but later on, they were incredibly quick. All in all, the race pace was quite strong."

Charles Leclerc rues the woes in qualifying in Imola

Charles Leclerc stated that as a team, they lacked pace in the qualifying session and the straight in the first sector was the main weakness for the upgraded SF-24 on Saturday.

He told the media:

"We lacked pace in Qualifying. After looking, we missed out on the first straight. On the rest of the lap, we were quick, so it's looking good for the rest of the season. It's incredible to be on the podium with all the Tifosi here in Imola."

His teammate Carlos Sainz reiterated to Sky Sports their qualifying perils and added 'something in the car' wasn't working:

"After Qualifying, we saw something in the car which was not quite working as intended or expected. We also struggled and had a few issues with deployment. In general, things didn't go well which at a home race I'm not happy with."

It would be fascinating to see if Ferrari can turn around their fortunes in qualifying in the all-important session at the Monaco Grand Prix next weekend. Charles Leclerc, in front of his home fans, cannot afford to have any slip-ups on Saturday.

The Tifosi would take some heart from the team's performance on Friday practice sessions when they were clearly ahead of McLaren and Red Bull on the track and would hope that they could replicate the same performance in the upcoming races and get a win into their name.