20/04/2025
NEWS STORY
Charles Leclerc put in a gritty performance to finish third in Saudi Arabia, claiming his first podium finish of the season.
His Scuderia Ferrari HP team-mate, Lewis Hamilton brought his SF-25 home in seventh place having struggled a bit more. For the second consecutive race, the team scored more points than any other, demonstrating a clear step forward in terms of race pace. The team did a great job, with two excellent pit stops and a well executed strategy. Obviously, there is still room for improvement in terms of performance but the signs of progress are clear to see, with work continuing apace both in Maranello and at the track.
Charles maintained fourth place after the start, while Lewis immediately got ahead of Carlos Sainz in the Williams to be sixth. On lap 12, Hamilton had to give best to Lando Norris, dropping him back to seventh. Lewis pitted on lap 21 to switch from Medium to Hard tyres, rejoining eighth behind Isack Hadjar. Leclerc did a great job of extending his stint on the Mediums, even leading the race up to lap 29, thus creating a nine lap difference on the same tyre as George Russell who had been third since the start. Charles easily caught the Mercedes thanks to his better pace and overtook Russell at his first attempt on lap 38 at turn 1. Around that time, Hadjar pitted which put Lewis back in seventh. After that, there were no more changes of position, but it was no walk in the park for Charles, as he had Norris in his mirrors on Medium tyres. Leclerc held firm, helped by the solid pace of his SF-25 which allowed him to deal swiftly with backmarkers, going on to take the chequered flag and record the 44th podium finish of his Formula 1 career. It was Ferrari's 830rd.
The championship now takes a breather before Miami hosts the sixth round of the season a fortnight from today, during the first weekend in May.
Charles Leclerc: We absolutely maximised everything this weekend. We executed the race perfectly, both in terms of strategy and the pit stop. Our mechanics have worked very hard to arrive at this level and I'm really proud of the job our team did today. We made the most of it.
Looking forward, we have to focus on qualifying. Sector one was our main weakness in qualifying here, while it may have been our best sector in the race, so we will work on finding the right balance there and push to make another step forward.
Lewis Hamilton: It was a challenging weekend with a lack of pace and consistency across the three days. The start of the Grand Prix was solid, but I had to manage the front tyres in the first stint. The second half showed some improvement, closing the gap to Kimi (Antonelli).
I'm focused on working with the team and seeing what we can bring to Miami. Huge congratulations to Charles and the team for a well-deserved podium.
Fred Vasseur: It was a good race especially with Charles of course, who took a well deserved third place. He was a bit conservative at the beginning, since he was in dirty air and our strategy was to extend the stint. His management was very good and he was able to increase his pace from lap 10 onwards, doing a wonderful job especially when he was in free air. In some parts of the race he was even faster than Piastri and Verstappen and this proves we are improving, at least in race trim, while we need to keep working on our form in qualifying.
Lewis struggled more with his pace in general and was not helped by the fact that he was often in dirty air. We need to stay focused and work flat out and I'm sure the results will come. From tomorrow we start preparing for Miami, and we will continue to deal with this season race by race. Focusing on ourselves. It's the same approach and attitude we had last year and we plan to stick with it.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Jeddah here.