2 hours Ago
Stay informed on all the biggest stories in Formula One . Sign up here to receive the Prime Tire newsletter in your inbox every Monday and Friday. LAS VEGAS — As Charles Leclerc made his rounds inside the post-race media pen, the video screens behind him showed Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz riding in a Rolls Royce en route to the podium interviews.
Based on Leclerc’s fiery comments over the team radio moments earlier, he felt the third-place Ferrari driver tagging along with Mercedes’ 1-2 finishers should have been him instead. Advertisement “Yeah, I did my job, but being nice f—s me over all the f—g time,” Leclerc said to his race engineer over the radio. “It’s not even being nice, it’s just being respectful.
I know I need to shut up, but at one point it’s always the same.” Leclerc had largely calmed down by the time he reached the media pen and was reluctant to go into details about the exact source of his frustration. There did not seem to be the sort of ‘smoking gun’ team orders moment that can occasionally generate anger from an F1 driver, and Leclerc declined to expand on what exactly had him so upset.
“Every time there’s these kind of frustrations, obviously there’s not the background for everybody, and there’s just no need for me to go into the details of everything that’s discussed, so I won’t go further into that discussion,” he told Sky Sports. Leclerc did drop a hint when he referenced letting Sainz go without a fight during the race’s first stint. At the time of the pass on Lap 7, Leclerc was struggling with tire graining after launching an early attack on Mercedes’ George Russell and was fading quickly.
He moved over for Sainz before the team even had to ask to try and give him a chance to go after Russell ahead. “I did my part,” as he described it to Sky. “The rest we’ll discuss it with the team.
” Asked to elaborate further, Leclerc said he had “already said too much.” “It’s not about favoring one or the other; it’s about things that we have been told,” he said. “It’s just frustrating when it’s like this, and it’s been frustrating for me — but I can understand that nobody understands.
” Speaking to a small group of reporters in the Ferrari hospitality unit after the race, team principal Fred Vasseur said he felt Leclerc’s comments were “more the fact that the situation was really difficult for everybody” than related to one specific moment. Advertisement A translation of the driver’s comments to the French-speaking Canal+ channel included the assertion, “from now on, I will only think about myself.” Asked if he was worried Leclerc would follow through on that threat to be more selfish going forward, Vasseur said he was “not worried at all.
” “It’s always the same story that they have to make comments,” Vasseur said before catching himself. “They don’t have to make comments, but they are doing comments in the lap, and they don’t always have the full picture. We will discuss together.
” Sainz was also asked about the disagreement but declined to shed light on what exactly the source of Leclerc’s frustration may have been. He’d crossed the line two seconds ahead in third place of his teammate, who’d spent the final stint stuck in his wheel tracks. “I don’t like using the media to criticize or to demonstrate or to prove if I’m happy or not,” Sainz told Sky.
“I prefer to do that behind closed doors because there’s never a good outcome from these kinds of comments in the media.” That said, Sainz noted he was the “first one” struck with the unhappiness bug on Saturday night. That’s because he’d been trying to get out of the way on quickly graining tires and asked the team multiple times to pit him but the team was not prepared to change tires when Sainz was ready.
After he had already slowed the car to turn down the pit lane, losing several seconds in the process, Sainz was forced to dart back onto the track at the last moment. On a day when Ferrari had hoped to take advantage of McLaren’s struggles and make more considerable inroads on its constructors’ championship lead, only coming away with one car on the podium was a source of disappointment. It simply didn’t have the pace to beat Mercedes, regardless of any disgruntlement from Leclerc or Sainz.
“I guess he’s not happy, but I’m also not happy with the way things were handled at the time,” Sainz said. “I think no one’s happy today in the team because we all expected a bit more.” Top photo: Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images.
