Charles Leclerc responds to Hamilton: “Talking to the team, I didn’t receive very clear instructions. I don’t know if Lewis was very unhappy with what I did, but it also seemed to me that what he did was very on the limit”
The controversy of the weekend was carried out by the Ferrari men. Charles Leclerc tried to overtake on the outside Lewis Hamilton and place first in turn 4 of the first lap of the Mexican GP and the Brit was not going to make it easy for him. Hamilton extended the braking and the two went beyond the limits of the track. The Monegasque was sanctioned for not returning position and gaining an advantage while Lewis lost position in favor of Verstappen, who ended up winning the race.
Everyone at Ferrari ended up very angry. Fred Vasseur, Team Principal of Maranello, said that out of respect for the brand, the attitude of his drivers was disappointing and that he will speak with both of them so that it does not happen again.
Hamilton went a little further with his criticism of his teammate, ensuring that Leclerc’s maneuver was a matter of pure mentality. “This boy is 28 years old, so I don’t think it’s an age thing. I think it’s a question of mentality. It’s “all or nothing” type. Like: either I win, or neither of us wins, and it shouldn’t be like that,” said the Briton at the FIA press conference.
Charles Leclerc also did not want to add fuel to the fire and wanted to take a little of the iron out of the matter. What the Monegasque did consider is that Hamilton could also have acted differently.
“We are fighting for victory, so, Of course, both he and I are going to leave very little room. In the end, we both made a mistake going into Turn 4. It’s not like we were touching or anything. “We both went straight and that gave Max the opportunity to overtake us,” he said in statements reported by Motorsport.com.
“Obviously we will talk about it. I don’t know if he was very unhappy with what I did, because it also seemed to me that what he did was very borderline. I think maybe I was more angry with the whole situation, with how what happened in turns 4 and 5 was handled, with the penalty and everything else. So it’s something we’ll talk about, for sure.”
In the end Leclerc went from leading the race to making a major mistake on the start after the red flag caused by Bottas’s accident. The Monegasque miscalculated and made a tremendous flat to his tires when braking for Turn 1. From there he lost all rhythm and had to settle for fourth place.
I think we had a pretty good rhythm, but unfortunately after the second restart everything got a little more complicated. There were a lot of rubber chips on the right side of the track and when I braked, although I didn’t apply too much pressure on the pedal, I blocked immediately and reached the ply of the tires. So the last stint was very complicated,” he concluded.
