The Monegasque finished just off the podium in Las Vegas, furious with his teammate Carlos Sainz, who attacked him when he was supposed to keep his position.
The beautiful relationship built over the last four years between Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc will have had some heated moments. This Las Vegas Grand Prix is one of them. LThe two men spent the race following each other at similar paces. After his second pit stop, the Monegasque came out just in front of his teammate and his engineer, Bryan Bozzi, assured him that Sainz had been asked not to attack him.
But the Spaniard was urgent, preventing Leclerc from concentrating on managing his tires, as requested by the team. The future Williams driver ended up passing, enraging his teammate at the finish. On the radio, Charles Leclerc let loose, be careful the vocabulary used is quite flowery.
Leclerc completely lets loose against Sainz
When his engineer asked him to do a “pick-up”, to collect pieces of rubber on the deceleration lap, the No. 16 replied: “Yes, whatever you want as always“, visibly annoyed. “Charles, you did your job, ok ? ” replied Bryan Bozzi, provoking the ire of his pilot.
“It's the usual. I did my job, but by being nice I get screwed every time. It's not even about being nice, it's just respect. I know that I shouldn't say anything, but every time it's the same.” Leclerc enraged. “You did the right thing for the team”, his engineer tried to soften him up before asking him again to do the pick-up.
“Fuck pickup, what the fuck do you want” the pilot continued, before realizing that the radio was still on. “And the radio is on, I'm sorry” immediately added Charles Leclerc.
Cold, after the race, he was able to provide a more detailed analysis of his weekend and congratulate Max Verstappen, officially titled, during an interview given to our colleagues at Canal+.
“The first 10 laps were a bit hot. I was very fast, I tried to be aggressive but we kept the tires a lot less than the others. On the second stint it was a lot better but it was a little bit too late. We're not grabbing enough compared to McLaren, especially since it's a track where we had to be very fast. But the Mercedes were untouchable. So when we put that into the balance we achieved the best possible result. Max for his title But anyway. I think it was only a matter of time. He had another exceptional season, he deserves it.
Photo credit: Ferrari.
