“We were living on the edge,” Jock Clear reacts to Charles Leclerc’s ‘dramatic’ win over Max Verstappen in Austria

“We were living on the edge,” Jock Clear reacts to Charles Leclerc’s ‘dramatic’ win over Max Verstappen in Austria

Charles Leclerc celebrates victory in his Ferrari after Carlos Sainz sits broken

Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen have definitely looked class apart from the chasing pack. The duo have been competing with each other ever since their karting days and we are getting to see that rivalry in F1 now. Max Verstappen has been the better off in their last few exchanges but Charles Leclerc made it clear in Austria that he will not go down without a fight.

Red Bull has the edge in Austria because of the layout of the track. The Red Bull Ring had three long straights suiting the superior top speed of the RB-18. But, most of us failed to factor in the tyre degradation in the scorching heat. While Max Verstappen sprinted home to win his second sprint of the season, Charles Leclerc got him back in the race owing to lesser degradation on his tyres.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5w9vp0lIA4

But, despite that, Charles Leclerc was under immense pressure in the last stint of the race. The Monegasque driver was having a lot of problems under braking as his throttle was stuck up 30%. What this meant was that he had to brake earlier than usual and also had to bring up the throttle. With Max Verstappen going full throttle at you for the race win, that is definitely a tricky situation.

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Charles Leclerc impresses Jock clear with his tricky win over Max Verstappen

Mattia Binotto's Ferrari
Charles Leclerc wins the Austrian Grand Prix.

But Charles Leclerc was able to somehow manage it and Jock Clear has reacted to his victory. He said, “We were living on the edge, weren’t we? He wasn’t getting the braking he wanted so he was just braking early and leaving himself a bit of margin.“

“But of course, when you’ve got Verstappen behind you on the same tyres closing in, you have to make a judgement on how much you will back off.”

“I think we felt we were more competitive than we looked on Saturday. We had good pace yesterday, but we weren’t able to really close the gap in those 23 laps because tyre deg hadn’t become a problem.”

Charles Leclerc showed us how talented a driver he is as he fought through adversity to win one of the most important races of the season. It’ll be interesting to see how Max and Red Bull react to it.

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