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Charles Leclerc managed a stunning recovery drive to finish fourth in Sepang after enduring an afternoon where, by his own admission, everything that could go wrong simply did. Dropping all the way to last place in the early stages of the race, the Ferrari driver dug deep to salvage a solid points finish in Malaysia.
That disaster of an opening half involved a brutal mix of strategy errors, contact, and mechanical drama. When the race got underway in tricky wet-dry conditions, Ferrari made the wrong call by bolting soft compound tyres onto the cars while the circuit was still too wet. Both drivers tumbled down the order as intermediate runners flew past, forcing the pit wall to call Leclerc in.
Fred is doing absolutely everything in order to bring back the team to the top, and we are all doing that, and to see all of these headlines in the last few days haven’t been nice at all,
Unfortunately, swapping the slicks was only part of it. Contact with Nico Hulkenberg had handed the Ferrari a puncture and broken front wing. A slow stop to fix the damage dropped the Monegasque driver dead last in the field.
"Everything that could have gone wrong in the first half of the race did go wrong, everything that could have gone right though in the second part of the race went right for us," Leclerc explained. He admitted that the machine never gave him a good feeling throughout the day, citing inconsistencies and struggles to extract maximum potential from the car.
Meanwhile, team mate Lewis Hamilton also plummeted to 17th after starting on the softs before executing an unlikely podium charge. Those twin recovery drives meant Ferrari extended their advantage over McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship while marginally closing the gap to Mercedes, proving the car had decent race pace despite the strategic mess.
The result arrived amid a weekend clouded by off-track noise surrounding the future of Team Principal Fred Vasseur. Leclerc was proud of the fighting spirit inside the garage and made it clear the headlines were wide of the mark.
"Fred is doing absolutely everything in order to bring back the team to the top, and we are all doing that, and to see all of these headlines in the last few days haven’t been nice at all," Leclerc said. "We are very united, that is the most important and I just hope we are back on the top step of the podium as soon as possible."
