Charles Leclerc does not believe that the disagreement with Lewis Hamilton on the opening lap of the Mexico Grand Prix will become a major issue within Ferrari. The Monégasque acknowledged that the episode will be discussed by the team, but downplayed the severity of the spat that ended up hindering both drivers.
The confusion happened at turn 4 of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. Hamilton, who had started from pole, was defending the lead when Leclerc tried to overtake. The two braked late, ran straight, and opened the door for Max Verstappen to gain a position.
Hamilton received a five-second penalty for cutting the corner and taking the lead. Leclerc, on the other hand, did not return the position to his teammate, since that would also have allowed Verstappen to overtake. The decision irked the Brit, who complained over the radio and demanded solutions to the “big problems” that the situation brought to his race.
Leclerc explained that he did not receive a clear directive from the team about how to act and even questioned the engineers during the race: “I really didn’t have a clear reply, and I think it was confusing enough to keep the position,” he said. “I was waiting for some kind of penalty… I spoke briefly with the team to try to understand. I asked: ‘What should I do now?’”
“It’s always very tricky. And obviously, in that situation, you kind of expect… you have to do something, but is it the second? Is it the third? Is it the fourth? Well, the fourth probably didn’t make sense, but the second or the third. In the end, I carried on. Obviously, it will be a bit of a topic to be discussed for sure at the next meeting.”
During the pit stops, Verstappen took the lead and never relinquished it again, even after the red flag caused by Valtteri Bottas and the second standing restart. Hamilton finished in second, while Leclerc ended up in fourth, also behind Kimi Antonelli, who clinched the F1 drivers’ championship.
Despite his teammate’s complaint, the Monegasque believes the incident does not deserve so much attention. He emphasized that there was no contact between the cars and that both made mistakes in the same corner.
“We’re fighting for the win, so obviously there will be very little margin between him and me,” he said. “In the end, both of us made a mistake in Turn 4. It’s not as if we had contact or anything like that. We both went straight, and that gave Max the opportunity to overtake. So I don’t think it should be such a big issue. Of course, it was tight; Turns 1-2-3 were very tight, but I expected to push for the lead. Turns 4 and 5, we both made a mistake that I paid for with a penalty. Then you can argue whether it was enough or not, and Lewis paid at the exit of Turn 5 with Max,” he concluded.
