At the Azerbaijan Grand Prix a power unit failure caused a retirement for Ferrari's title contender Charles Leclerc. The Monaco native would need to make changes to the internals of his power unit ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix and as a result he would be saddled with a back of the grid penalty. In modern day Formula 1 bad luck begets more misfortune and for Leclerc that back of the grid penalty left him severely hampered at the Canadian Grand Prix.

When the race started Leclerc showed a lot of patience to wait for his opportunities to make his way through the field with some spectacular moves made during the course of 70 laps. The most notable of these was on Valtteri Bottas but overall it was the maturity of Leclerc's drive that impressed. On a difficult day it would have been very easy to get frustrated and make a mistake. Instead he came away with a top five finish and ten points.

"I gave it my all," said Leclerc. "It never feels good to finish fifth but considering where we started and the way that the race unfolded, it was the best result we could bring home today. The first part of the race was quite frustrating, as we were stuck behind a DRS train, so it was all about practicing patience."

The DRS train that Leclerc is referring to was one that snaked along the high speed straights with overtaking aided by regulations aimed to assist cars to overtake. This meant that having a faster car wasn't a big advantage because you couldn't break away from them. Leclerc needed to be patient and use strategy to make his progress.

"After our pit stop we came out behind some cars and started fighting our way back up. This part was much more fun, because I had to be quite aggressive to make it work. It was just one of those races where you had to maximize the points and that's exactly what we did today. I'm looking forward to Silverstone now. It's one of my favourite circuits on the calendar and hopefully we can score some big points there."

Leclerc finds himself 49 points behind Max Verstappen in the standings as Formula 1 heads towards mid-season.

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