Leclerc has a talent for outperforming in an imperfect car to set surprisingly fast times over a single lap. But he wasn’t able to keep up with the Red Bulls in either Saturday’s sprint race or the main Grand Prix on Sunday. Still, he finished second in the sprint and third in the main race to jumpstart a poor start to the 2023 season, where retired in two of the first three races. Leclerc now has 19 career pole positions — not counting his “sprint shootout” pole Saturday, which used a shortened format — but only five race wins. His record hardly mirrors Max Verstappen, who has 22 poles but 37 wins and two world championships.
Leclerc last converted a pole position into a race victory over a year ago, at the Australian Grand Prix in April 2022. Since that win, he has qualified on pole eight times and picked up one win, when he start- ed second in Austria but passed Verstappen. Back in the 1980s, René Arnoux racked up 18 career pole positions but only seven wins, largely because of driving a fast but fragile turbocharged Renault at the peak of his career
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