Charles Leclerc delivered an expletive-filled rant on team radio after the Las Vegas Grand Prix, believing he was too respectful of teammate Carlos Sainz as he ended up missing out on a podium finish.
Sainz was running ahead of Leclerc prior to the second round of pit stops but then had to give up a position to his teammate, before using an undercut to re-pass the Monegasque driver. Leclerc was told Sainz had been informed not to overtake him as he was emerging from the pits but was passed two corners later, and when asked to pick up rubber post-race and congratulated for doing his job post-race, Leclerc was clearly angry.
“Yes, whatever you want as always,” Leclerc said in response to race engineer Bryan Bozzi. “Yeah I did my job, but being nice f***s me over all the f***ing time, all the f***ing time. 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. Oh my f***ing God.”
When then reminded to pick up rubber again, Leclerc replied: “Yeah, yeah, f***ing pick-up what the f**k you want.
“S**t, s**t, s**t, and the radio is on – I’m sorry, that was on me.”
Explaining the situation from his side, Sainz believes Ferrari handled the second pit stop phase poorly that led to him losing significant time when he had been running ahead of Leclerc.
“I think he grained the medium tires and I managed to get ahead before the pit stop on mediums,” Sainz said. “Then I did grain my hards and he was coming quick behind me, and I was anticipating what was going to be a situation, because Lewis [Hamilton] was right behind Charles at the time, and I was pretty sure the team was going to ask me to let Charles by because he was quicker at the time.
“As I was on grained tires, I asked the team two or three times to box me, to get me out of the way, and get me a new set of hards to make sure that I wasn’t losing a lot of race time by having to let Charles by and then having to fight Lewis at the same time.
“For some reason we didn’t box and I ended up having to let Charles by a lap later than was planned and losing a lot of race time. And by the time I was going to box, then we didn’t even box.
“So I guess he’s not happy, but I’m also not happy with the way things were handled at the time. I think no one’s happy today in the team because we all expected a bit more. I’m on the podium, so at least I got that for the team. But at the same time, I don’t think we could have finished much better than P3 and P4 today.”
