Charles Leclerc believes a slow pit stop left him unable to challenge the Mercedes pair after battling his way through the field from 19th.

Despite finishing 5th, the Monegasque feels his Canadian Grand Prix could have been even better, had he not suffered a slow pit stop which cost him vital seconds.

Among the very last to pit, when the Ferrari driver finally pitted he was running in sixth, however a poor stop saw him rejoin the race behind the DRS train led by Lance Stroll.

However, with his fresher rubber, the late safety car that followed Yuki Tsunoda's accident afforded him the opportunity to make short work of the slower cars ahead. Nonetheless, without the time lost during his pit stop Leclerc feels it could have been even better.

"The pit stop put us a bit in a bad situation," he said at race end, "as we cleared the DRS train then got another DRS train and it cost me a bit at the end

"I got back four cars again with the DRS train and I had to be a bit more aggressive after that to come back.

"Considering all of this, P5 was the best," he admitted. "It would have changed quite a bit without those few things, obviously the pitstop cost us quite a bit today.

"The thing about the middle stint, there was nothing we could have done better there. It was just the situation we found ourselves in.

"In the very first part of the race there was no problem with traction in general," he explained. "It was just everyone had DRS so I couldn't do anything. It was a race I had to be patient. At the beginning I was stuck in a DRS train, then I was stuck behind Esteban.

"Whenever I had free air I think pace was really good, but Esteban had new tyres and so out of turn 10 that's where you need the tyres. He had much more grip than I did, so I struggled to follow him there and that was very frustrating. There was quite a big problem of traction."

Nonetheless, there were no repeats of the reliability that cost him dear in Spain and Baku.

"I know the pace is in the car, which of course motivates me. Red Bull had a few problems today. So yeah, definitely reliability is going to be a big thing," he replied when asked of his title hopes.

"Reliability seems to be a concern for everyone this season," he continued. "If we fix our reliability the performance is there to come back so already from Silverstone we will try to get a few points back.

"What we need whenever we have more difficult weekends like this weekend is just to go and take some good points, and that's what we did today.

"I'm not worried," he insisted, "I'm extremely motivated to finally have a clean weekend, to show we are here and that we are strong. Hopefully we can do that in Silverstone."

Check out our Sunday gallery from Montreal here.