Leclerc snatches second in Dutch GP sprint on a gamble that was 'either very right or very wrong'

Charles Leclerc finished second in the Formula 1 sprint race at Zandvoort on Saturday, completing one of the session’s few overtakes when he passed Lando Norris on lap 18 of 24 — a move made all the more striking by the fact that Leclerc was running on soft tyres while almost the entire field had opted for mediums.

The Monegasque was one of only two drivers to start the sprint on the softer compound, a decision taken jointly with Ferrari based on data gathered during Friday practice and the team’s generally strong tyre degradation picture this weekend. Despite the logic behind the call, Leclerc conceded he felt exposed the moment he pulled onto the grid and looked around.

“Always when you are the only one doing something, it’s either very right or very wrong,” Leclerc said with a smile. “I think it was a good choice in the end, so that’s positive. It means that we did our homework well in FP1, but surely when I was on the grid, I just hoped to have made the right choice.”

The strategy was complicated further by Ferrari running Lewis Hamilton on a different compound, meaning there was no straightforward internal reference point. Leclerc said the decision was not obvious, but his discomfort with the medium tyre after limited running in practice tipped the balance.

“It wasn’t because we had Lewis and I on two different strategies, so surely it wasn’t obvious. But I thought that it was a good tyre after FP1, even though I had done very few laps and I wasn’t so comfortable with the medium. So yeah, I was happy with that choice.”

Pirelli had flagged on Friday that the C3 and C4 compounds are closely matched in durability at Zandvoort, with only the hardest available tyre — the C2 — representing a meaningful step in longevity. That context made Leclerc’s soft-tyre pace in the closing laps particularly notable.

The sprint result reinforced a pattern Leclerc had already identified on Friday: Ferrari’s race pace is competitive, but single-lap qualifying performance remains a concern. He qualified third-fastest in practice yet still views that area as a weakness the team cannot easily address at this circuit.

“I think our pace had been quite strong yesterday in FP1 on the long runs, which we did on the medium, so we knew we had a good race car. However, in qualifying we are lacking a little bit. I was expecting to make positions at the start rather than at the end of the race with these soft tyres, but yeah, it was quite a good race.”

With deployment strategies expected to converge as the grand prix weekend progresses, Leclerc acknowledged that overtaking opportunities may become harder to manufacture — making Ferrari’s tyre management advantage a key variable heading into Sunday’s main event.