Charles Leclerc criticised Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz for his hard intra-team racing during the opening laps of Sunday’s Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix, saying “I probably wasn’t the right person,” for the Spaniard to battle.
Leclerc started ahead of Sainz with the two Ferraris locking out the third row of Sunday’s grid at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
However, Sainz utilised DRS to pass Leclerc into Turn 1 on Lap 3 of the GP, pinching the Monegasque driver to the inside kerb and damaging his front wing.
Leclerc sympathised with Sainz given it was his home race, but still wasn’t pleased with his team-mate’s antics.
“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,” Leclerc said.
“It’s a bit unnecessary, but I also understand that 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.
“We had a clear strategy at the beginning of the race with the team to both save tyres to attack late on.
“Carlos on that lap didn’t do any saving in Turn 14 of course had an opportunity to overtake in Turn 1, which is a bit of a shame because we lost time between us, I damaged my front wing because Carlos didn’t see that I was in the inside and that makes our race more difficult.”
Leclerc was able to recover from the early Ferrari kerfuffle to reclaim fifth position by the time the chequered flag fell just fourth-tenths behind Mercedes’ George Russell.
Still, the Monegasque driver believes he reached Ferrari’s ceiling this weekend with his Sunday performance.
“When you look at how close we finished with George in front there’s always things we can do better but we just didn’t have enough pace to do anything better today,” he said.
After a pointless result in Canada due to reliability woe regardless of Ferrari’s poor performance in Montreal, Lelcerc was asked whether the Scuderia had uncovered all of the issues with its car amid an extensive Spanish GP upgrade package.
“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,” Leclerc said.
“However, here, it’s still a bit too early on to say. My best guess would be track characteristics didn’t fit our car, and that’s my best guess, but also what I hope for, just to be back on pace from now on.”
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