Leclerc delighted Ferrari bounced back after "completely unfounded noise and rumours"

Hot on the heels of his first podium finish since the Belgian Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc claims that the Scuderia's result left him delighted after "completely unfounded noise and rumours around the team."

Following a tough opening day at the United States Grand Prix, Ferrari bounced back on Saturday to claim a fourth and fifth place in the Austin F1 Sprint before Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton delivered a superb job to secure P3 and P5 for the race itself.

The Monegasque took a gamble in the race, becoming the only driver in the top top 15 to start on the soft tyre. That risk paid off, as he made his way past McLaren rival Lando Norris through Turn 1.

Although Leclerc was expected to struggle on his red-walled tyres, he managed to keep his soft tyres alive. He made his sole pit stop relatively early and kept Norris behind, but he eventually lost out to the Briton in the dying stages of the race. He still managed to secure his first podium finish since Belgium.

His team-mate Lewis Hamilton opted for the conventional strategy, starting on the mediums. He ran fourth for most of the race. Although he managed to stay close to Norris and Leclerc in the early part of the race, he lost valuable time during the laps directly ahead of his pit stop, which meant he had to settle for fourth place.

Asked how pleasing Ferrari's turnaround was after its struggles on the opening day of the United States Grand Prix, Leclerc added: " I’m very happy. I'm very happy because obviously we had the gearbox problem in FP1, which cost us a little bit of laps, which then meant we were a little bit on the back foot, trying to recover in the Sprint Qualifying and Sprint Race.

"And then in qualifying we did some fine tuning, we found a lot more performance. And today was a really good race for us. So it’s a good thing, especially considering the whole situation. The second part of the season hasn’t been easy.

"There is completely unfounded noise and rumours around the team. And I think to demonstrate that in those kinds of situations we can stay focused on the job and be rewarded with a podium is a really nice feeling."

Having taken a big gamble at Austin by starting the race on the soft compound, Leclerc managed to get ahead of Lando Norris and stay ahead of the McLaren driver for over 50 laps.

"I knew it was an aggressive strategy. My plan was to be first after the first corner. I didn’t quite make that, but at least I gained a position, which helped me a little bit with free air.

"And that definitely helped our race. Again, I knew it was aggressive but considering the feeling I had on the Hard in FP1, I was quite convinced I didn’t want to touch that tyre.

"So yeah, I was just a little bit worried when my engineer got on the radio on the grid and I was the only car on Softs, basically. So I thought, “OK, maybe there's something I didn’t feel right.” But in the end, it ended up a good choice.

Pressed on to reveal why he was unable to keep Norris at bay, Leclerc admitted that he simply ran out of tyres due to his early pit stop.

"I mean, Lando had four, five laps cooling down the tyres, and then I knew that when he would come back it would be very difficult to keep him behind. I tried because I managed to do so for quite a few laps, but then towards the end the tyres were starting to struggle a bit more."