Turnaround initiated at Ferrari? 'It wasn't representative of us'

Charles Leclerc undoubtedly goes into the weekend in Miami with a positive feeling. The Monegasque driver can look back on a fine race in Azerbaijan, and he no doubt wants to continue that line in hot Florida. The street circuit in Miami Gardens - a suburb of the metropolis - should show whether the performance in Baku was not a one-off flurry.

Until the race in Baku, Leclerc had only accumulated six points this season. Obviously, for a driver with title aspirations, that is far too few, and this early in the season - especially given Red Bull Racing's current strength - he can virtually forget about the championship. Yet there is no question of too much joy shown from Leclerc, as he told the media, including GPblog.

"Yeah, happy is probably not the word," said the Ferrari driver. "It's good to finally score some points as I've said many times this weekend, I don't think that the six points we had coming here was really representative of our true performance. But of course, we are lacking a lot of performance compared to the Red Bull guys and also to the Astons in the race, but we deserve more points."

Nevertheless, Leclerc is happy - perhaps rather relieved - that he earned 22 points in Baku (collected in the sprint race and Sunday's Grand Prix). "So it's good to finally have those points. But now we just need to work extremely hard in order to be fighting with those guys again in the race."