F1 | Leclerc annoyed: “Sainz a little over the limit, but we'll clarify”

It was the Ferrari drivers who put some spice into the first seasonal Sprint of the 2024 Formula 1 in Shanghai. The Reds finished in fourth and fifth place, but what caused discussion was a contact between the SF-24s in the final part of the short race, when Charles Leclerc tried to overtake Carlos Sainz at the braking point of the penultimate corner.

A few corners earlier, the Spaniard had already had another contact with Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin in the battle for third position and then ended up widening, being overtaken by Sergio Perez's Red Bull. The son of an artist, however, was rather harsh when his teammate arrived behind him, because he extended the braking at the end of the long opposite straight of the Chinese track, also triggering a slight contact.

The Monegasque still managed to overtake by crossing the lines between Turn 1 and Turn 2, but by then Perez had escaped in front of him, so he had to settle for the “wooden medal”. Once he took the checkered flag, therefore, he did not hide his frustration and opened up via radio and said to the wall: “We need to talk. He fought more with me than with all the others”.

Once he arrived at the usual interviews, while trying to remain as diplomatic as possible and ensuring that the matter will be clarified without too many problems, Leclerc nevertheless reiterated that he did not like Carlos' defense too much: “There have been occasions in the past in which I was aggressive, but I think Carlos was aggressive today. It will be a discussion as there always is in these cases. We'll talk about it later and we'll clarify it It will be the same this weekend too, but today we went a little over the limit.”

“When there is contact with your partner, especially when you are in different situations, given that he was starting to struggle a bit with the tire while I was still in quite a good position, but it wasn't easy to overtake because the three cars in front they had DRS for me, it's a shame because I lost two seconds on Perez which then was impossible to recover”, he added.

If nothing else, this afternoon there will be qualifying for the long race in which we will try to make up for it and Leclerc looks at this with optimism: “If we have a good qualifying, it will be a turning point, because it hasn't happened to me in the last few races. With all the work that I did yesterday in SQ1 and SQ2 I found the feeling again. This doesn't mean it will be the same this afternoon, because the line is really thin, but I'm confident I've made some progress.”