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“This year he was much more relaxed from the beginning. From Lap 1 of FP1 he did a fantastic weekend, he was always flying. Even when we had the issue in Q1 with a plastic bag [going] into the front wing and we had to pit, we lost two or three laps in a row with this.
“But he was able to stay very calm – we could have been out in Q1. He was very in control from the beginning. Today in the race I think that it was perhaps not from an outside point of view the most exciting race of the season, but we knew after the red flag we had to do 76 laps with the same set of tyres.
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“We asked him to slow down and he was perhaps three or four seconds on the pace at this stage. But he was always able to manage the situation.”
Vasseur also had words of praise for Leclerc’s team mate Carlos Sainz, who crossed the line in third after similarly spending much of the race trying to manage his pace.
“Carlos did exactly the same job, and that was even more difficult because we asked him to stay not too far away off [Oscar] Piastri to cover a potential Safety Car, but to also slow down [Lando] Norris for [George] Russell,” said Vasseur.
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