Charles Leclerc has said his Ferrari Formula 1 team-mate Carlos Sainz went over the limit with his defence during the closing stages of the Chinese Grand Prix Sprint.
The Ferrari drivers had been situated in a battle for the final top-three place in the truncated race when Sainz endeavoured to overtake the struggling Fernando Alonso.
Sainz set up the move through the first corners to dive to the outside at Turn 6, but Alonso continued the battle through the high-speed sweeps and the pair touched.
Alonso’s lunge into Turn 9 opened the door for Sergio Perez to seize third, with Leclerc also displacing the Aston Martin and then sizing up Sainz on the back straight.
However, Sainz left his braking late and slid into the side of his team-mate at the Turn 14 hairpin, forcing Leclerc to run wide on the exit to avoid more severe contact.
While Leclerc capitalised on the Spaniard drifting wide at the start of the next lap to head the Ferrari battle, the Monegasque believes that Sainz was too aggressive.
Asked whether Sainz had overstepped the mark in that moment, Leclerc answered: “I think so. But to be honest, I have crossed the line also myself in the past.
“And when this happens, we normally have a discussion. We clear the air, which we went through that in the past already. And it went really well.
“So I have no worries that it will be the case also this weekend. But today he went a bit over the limit.
“I mean, a contact between us two being in a different race situation, because I had saved quite a bit the tyres. I had a good pace at the end.”
Leclerc had attempted to pass Perez on two occasions earlier in the race and he has suggested that third was possible without the time lost in his tussle with Sainz.
“It’s a bit of a shame that we lost that gap to Perez and couldn’t go and take him,” he continued.
“But it’s like this at the end. P4, it could have been P3, one point, you can always do better but we’ll focus on to this afternoon because this will be the game changer, having a good qualifying which hasn’t been the case for me in the last two races.
“I have done a lot of work, I am very confident that I have done steps forward. Now it’s up to me to prove it.
“I think yesterday SQ1, SQ2 was really good. I need to reproduce that tonight, this afternoon.”
Sainz explained that he had degraded his rubber in his forlorn bid to overtake Verstappen at the beginning, which contributed to his late clash with his team-mate.
“Well, I think I did a good start. I was pushing Max hard at the beginning because I knew if I was passing him, I had a strong chance of winning the race,” Sainz said.
“That probably killed my tyres a bit and then I was managing for the rest of the race.
“Until I caught Fernando and then behind Fernando, I think I did a really good move around the outside of Turn 7.
“I think from then on he decided to be all or nothing into Turn 9, which cost us both the race because I think I picked up damage and a lot of dirt in my tyre from that optimistic move.
“And then from there on I was sliding around with the damage in the car and dirt on my tyres and I was doing everything I could to defend and obviously sliding maybe had a bit of a moment there with Charles but I apologise if I did something over the limit, racing really hard today and you know I was trying my best to keep it under control out there.”
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