Portugal Colonial - Leclerc concentrates on positives despite Spain retirement

The 24-year-old Monegasque driver, forced to abandon the race after 27 laps, said he felt there were more good points to learn from his upbeat weekend than negatives despite losing the race and his lead of this year's drivers’ world championship.

"I had no indication before and it just broke and then lost the power completely," he said. "It's a shame.

"In those moments, I believe that there’s nothing else I can do apart from looking at the positives -- and there are plenty this weekend.

"There’s the qualifying pace, the race pace and most importantly the tyre management.

"That’s been a weakness in the last few races and I think we definitely found something this weekend on that. So, it gives me the confidence for the rest of the season.

"On the other hand, we’ll look at this issue and we cannot afford for this to happen many times this season, so we need to find the problem."

Max Verstappen took full advantage of Leclerc’s travails to lead Sergio Perez home in a Red Bull one-two that lifted him to the top of the title race with a six-points lead after six races.

Leclerc said he was not too perturbed ahead of his home Monaco Grand Prix next weekend.

"That’s fine," he said, "I’m not looking at it. I think what is the most important is the overall performance and, performance-wise, we are performing very well.

"So, I can’t wait to go home next week and, hopefully, we’ll have a great result."

His Ferrari team-mate and home hero finished fourth after overcoming an early 'off' into the gravel and battling back to take advantage of late cooling issues for Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes.

A.Motta--PC