That Sunday for Ferrari at Sepang was a proper roller-coaster ride, as FormulaUno.it reports, kicked off by a bold gamble to start both cars on slick tires on a track that was still very wet indeed. Charles Leclerc found himself tumbling all the way to the back of the field after smacking his front wing in a collision with Nico Hulkenberg. Yet, with a bit of help from the racing gods and turning points, he clawed his way back to fourth at the checkered flag, slotting in right behind Lewis Hamilton.
Now, here's the thing: Leclerc was actually content with the final GP Bahrain result and stood up for the team's pre-race gamble, even while acknowledging that other outfits handle tricky conditions with far more precision. Diversifying strategies is always the safe route, he pointed out, but in those kinds of conditions, one car always suffers horribly while the other ends up on the wrong rubber because there's simply no middle ground. They genuinely believed they made the right call, noting that thirteen cars on the grid rolled out on slicks. Even so, he admitted they misjudged it, pointing out that teams like Red Bull consistently make much sharper decisions in those scenarios, and that is an area where they simply must take a step forward.
Remarkably, despite the early disasters, the final outcome matched or perhaps even exceeded expectations. Everything that could possibly go wrong in the opening stint went wrong, but everything that could break their way in the second half went right. A normal race wouldn't have yielded anything better than third or fourth anyway. It was certainly a lot more stressful than he would have liked, but the result was deserved.
That early chaos also brought a clumsy bump into Nico Hulkenberg's Audi, forcing an extra trip to the pits for a fresh nose. Throughout the afternoon, Leclerc lacked the outright sparkle of Lewis Hamilton, wrestling with the very same handling gremlins that popped up during Saturday's Q3 session. After the tangle with Hulkenberg, things only got tougher. Fourth was a solid return all things considered, but there was no catching the Mercedes of Antonelli or Verstappen because the raw pace simply wasn't there. He fought the machine hard all day, losing the sweet balance they enjoyed back in FP2 ever since that sudden shift in Q3, and the team will need to dig into the data to understand why.
To top it all off, the chaotic pre-race moments exposed a rather embarrassing software glitch across the grid that left multiple drivers unable to apply throttle. Leclerc voiced clear frustration on behalf of the drivers regarding power unit control, making it crystal clear that they hate situations where they lose direct control over the machine and the power being delivered.
