Leclerc wasn’t happy with the way Sainz passed him in Spain
Charles Leclerc says he didn’t understand what he called an “unnecessary” passing move by Ferrari team mate Carlos Sainz in the early stages of the Spanish GP.
The two drivers were running fifth and sixth positions when Sainz swept past at Turn 1 at the start of the fourth lap, with the pair making light contact.
Leclerc made his displeasure known over the team radio and explained after the race that both drivers had been told to take it easy and save their tyres in the early laps.
He indicating that Sainz had not stuck to the plan and that he was perhaps trying to make an impression in the week that his future looks set to be decided.
“We had a clear strategy at the beginning of the race with the team to both save tyres to attack later on,” he said.
“However, Carlos, on that lap, didn’t do any saving in Turn 14, and of course, had an opportunity to overtake me in Turn 1, which is a bit of a shame, because we lose time in between us.
“I damaged my front wing because of Carlos making the turn, not seeing that I was in the inside, and that makes our race more difficult. But it wouldn’t have changed significantly the end result.”
Expanding on the incident he said: “I didn’t understand the point of doing that when it was clearly stated before the race that we had to save in this part of the race.
“So it’s a bit unnecessary, but I also understand that I guess it’s his home race, and it’s also an important moment of his career.
“So I guess he wanted to do something a bit spectacular, but I probably wasn’t the right person to do that with.”
Later the positions were reversed after Sainz switched to hard tyres and Leclerc was on the more favourable soft for the final stint. They finished fifth and sixth, with Leclerc right on the tail of George Russell at the flag.
“When you look how close we finished with George in front there’s always things we can do better,” he said when asked by this writer if fifth was the best he could have achieved from where he started.
“But we just did not have enough pace to do anything better today. All the strategies weren’t too far off. So we had to do something different to try and put Russell under stress at the end of the race. Otherwise, we just had very similar pace.
“We used softs, and we didn’t use hard. Again, when you look at our numbers, and I think everybody’s pace today, there wasn’t a big difference between the compounds. I mean, it was all about a balance, but over 20 lap stints, it was very similar. So it wouldn’t have made a big difference.”
Ferrari has now had two tricky races following a below par performance in Montreal, but Leclerc is hoping that Spain was an anomaly and that Austria will be better.
“I think in Canada it was quite clear, and I think we are going to get better in those conditions the next time we are in those conditions, because we understood something,” he said.
“However, here, it’s still a bit too early on to say. My best guess will be that track characteristics don’t fit our car, and that’s my best guess, but also what I hope for, just to be back on pace from Austria onwards.”
“The high-speed we’ve been a bit struggling this weekend. So let’s see where we are next weekend with the high-speed, but we’ve been struggling a bit more than what I would have expected on the high-speed.”
Leclerc acknowledge that Ferrari has some work to do.
“Every issue is something that we need to tackle as quickly as possible,” he said. “But in F1, it doesn’t take that quick to fix those issues. So of course, we’ve seen, I think the first difficult race of the season was Shanghai, where we saw some things.
“Here we see it again, and we’ve got to focus on that. But before putting those upgrades on one specific issue, we’ve got to have a bit of time.
“And unfortunately even if the season is 24 races long, we still need to be back as quickly as possible, because these are very valuable points that we are losing against our competitors.”
Adam Cooper F1 