Where did Charles Leclerc's stunning Silverstone speed come from?

“A tricky qualifying,” he said. “I mean, obviously, with so little preparation going into quali, it makes things a little bit trickier. But I think we did a good job, we maximised the potential of the car.

“I was quite confident, especially in Q1 and Q2, I wasn’t at the level I wanted to be. And then in Q3, I regained the confidence and the pace a little bit in the car. I’m happy with how it went.” Like everyone else he didn’t know what to expect from the Saturday sprint: “We are all going into an unknown. We’ve got FP2 to try and prepare the sprint race as well as we can, and then let’s see what we can do.”

There was obviously a good chance that Perez would get ahead, and the McLarens of Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo were also a threat. In the event Fernando Alonso got in front of all of them and gave Leclerc a buffer. He ended the sprint still in fourth, claiming that starting spot for Sunday’s Grand Prix. It wasn’t the most eventful afternoon, but he had no complaints.

“Honestly I loved it, I really like this format for now because in some races for sure there won’t be much action in the sprint qualifying but at least it makes it exciting for every day.

“Honestly I loved it – normally I’m so bored in the car on the Friday!” Charles Leclerc

“Normally I’m so bored in the car on the Friday! Yesterday felt a bit more exciting and there was a bit more to gain to push straight out of the box in FP1 to be ready for qualifying.”

As he’d suggested the team arrived with an ideal set-up: “Actually yesterday from free practice to qualifying I didn’t even change the car, the car felt good. And that’s why I was saying, ‘I hope we will take advantage of that,’ and I think we did this weekend.”

He also enjoyed racing off the grid with a much lower fuel load, and thus a nimbler car.

“Yeah it is a big, big difference, it’s very nice. I prefer to drive in those conditions, it makes me think about refuelling a little bit because it feels very good and I think for racing also for those tyres they are in a much better window and it makes us push a lot more.

“Seventeen laps pushing flat out is normally not something we are used to unfortunately, so it feels good to be pushing for 17 laps!”

“I was really on it every lap” Charles Leclerc

With an eager Norris right behind him on the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix it looked like Leclerc would have his work cut out hanging onto his fourth place. In fact he beat Bottas off the line to claim third, and spent the first part of the opening lap watching Verstappen and Hamilton going at it. Indeed when the Mercedes driver went a little wide out of Luffield, Leclerc could have stuck his nose down the inside, but he left Hamilton the space to cut back across.

A few seconds later heading into Copse he had a perfect view as the two title protagonists collided, and Verstappen speared into the tyre wall. As Hamilton lost momentum Leclerc jinked right to claim the lead. Then came a safety car, followed soon after by the red flag.

Finally with three laps to go Hamilton was right on his tail. Ironically the passing move was made at Copse, where the Verstappen clash had happened a little earlier.

“I knew Lewis was in the inside,” said Leclerc. “I left a space and unfortunately I think I had stayed in front but in the very end of the corner I got a snap and lost a little bit of time and then Lewis got in front of me.

“Until then I still believed I could win this race, and it’s the way it should be. If I was thinking of being second before that, I think it will have gone even worse. I believed in it until the very last moment.

“Obviously I had my engineer telling me Lewis’s pace on the hard tyres, and I was like ‘that’s quick’. I was pushing 200%, but obviously it wasn’t good enough to keep that first position in the last laps.”

Leclerc was left to settle for second place, still comfortably ahead Bottas in third, and well clear of the McLarens.

On the slowing down lap he let forth a series of expletives on the radio, making clear how disappointed he was. His boss Mattia Binotto came on and told him not to worry, and that it had been a great race.

And indeed it had been, and it showed that Ferrari is making steps.

“Obviously going into this weekend there was absolutely no hope of fighting for a win here in Silverstone,” said Leclerc. “So this shows how great a job we are doing as a team. It’s not an easy situation but we’re working extremely well as a team and we have shown that today with this second place.

“Now we need to keep on working because that’s what we want to do consistently: fight for the win. So it’s great to be fighting today with Lewis but we shouldn’t expect to be in that position for the rest of the year – and for that we need to keep working.” The key is getting the car to perform on the tyres at every type of venue. At Silverstone, where Pirelli’s three hardest compounds were in play, the team got it right – now it has to continue that form elsewhere.

“There’s been a big investigation after France to try to understand exactly why we were struggling that much with those front tyres,” said Leclerc. “I don’t think we get that answer yet. So yes, we are much better here but I don’t think it is because we found the complete answer of what happened in France.

“The investigation is still going on and we are still working hard on it. And even though we’ve had a good day today we don’t forget about the bad day in France. And once we understand the full extent of why we were slow in France, then I’m pretty sure we will do a big step as a team, and it will help us to reproduce this type of performance as we did today.”