Scuderia Ferrari HP picked up its third podium of the season with a third place from Charles Leclerc, secured in the exciting final stages of the Spanish Grand Prix, thanks to a Safety Car and the race resuming with just six laps remaining.

The team picked up 23 points and is now in second place in the Constructors' championship. It is the Scuderia's 832nd podium, a 46th for Leclerc. He had sacrificed some qualifying performance to save tyres and that paid off today given that in the final stages, he was in fourth place having started seventh. Lewis however struggled after the restart, losing a place to Nico Hulkenberg.

Lewis and Charles got off the line well, getting ahead of the Mercedes. They swapped places on lap 10, as they were on different tyre strategies, running fourth and fifth behind the McLaren duo and Max Verstappen. Hamilton switched from Soft to Medium on lap 16, followed by Leclerc on lap 17, with positions remaining unchanged. At his second stop on lap 40, Charles fitted his second set of Mediums, which he chose not to use yesterday. Lewis would have to finish the race on the Soft compound so he stayed out until lap 46. With 15 laps to go, Charles was fourth with a comfortable lead over George Russell, while Lewis was sixth, running a strong pace and catching his fellow countryman. When Kimi Antonelli went off track on lap 54 the Safety Car came out which changed the picture of the race, with all the top ten coming in to fit newer Soft tyres, including Leclerc. But Verstappen only had Hards left having made three stops. At the restart with six laps remaining, the Dutchman almost lost control of the car coming out of the final corner and that allowed Charles to come alongside and then pass him going into turn 1 to take third place. Lewis struggled more and had to give best to Nico Hulkenberg on new Softs, which he had having failed to get further than Q2 yesterday. Leclerc was third across the line with Hamilton seventh, but he was promoted to sixth after Verstappen was given a penalty for causing a collision with Russell.

Canada in a fortnight. There are two weeks to go now before the next round of the championship, when the cars will be back in action in Montreal for round 10, the Canadian Grand Prix.

Charles Leclerc: Yesterday, I knew that I was sacrificing qualifying in order to have a better race on Sunday, but I didn't expect to find myself standing on the podium, so I'm happy about that.

The first two stints were really positive today, the last stint on the Medium was a bit more tricky, but then we had the Safety Car that gave us the opportunity to fit Soft tyres again and we took advantage of it.

We still have a lot of work to do and are not yet as fast as we want to be, but now we head home to reset and push to come back stronger in the coming races.

Lewis Hamilton: Today was definitely not what I was hoping for. I felt good going into the race, after a pretty good qualifying and the car performing better. But the balance felt off throughout the race and we lacked pace from the start. We don't have an explanation for it, so we'll have to go away and look into the data and any underlying issues. Congratulations to Charles, he did a great job and fully deserved the podium.

Fred Vasseur: It's always good to finish on the podium, and this result, following the one in Monaco confirms we're building momentum. We've now had three strong races in a row and have moved back up to second place in the Constructors' championship, which is a positive step.

Today's race was quite intense. Like most teams, we struggled to clearly understand the performance delta between the Medium and Soft tyres. In the end, we saw better pace and consistency on the Soft, which played into our hands with Charles at the end. Of course the Safety Car also helped, as it allowed us to get ahead of Verstappen, who was on Hards. It was a good recovery, and the strategy worked.

Lewis also had strong pace until the final stint, where he reported some balance issues. We'll look into it, but it was important that still managed to bring home some points.

Since Miami, we've shown consistent progress, apart from qualifying in Imola. McLaren is still ahead, but we're closing the gap step by step. We need to keep improving, and stay in the fight.

Check out our Sunday gallery from Barcelona here.