Charles Leclerc has dismissed suggestions that he is at odds with his Ferrari race engineer after what seemed like a number of angry radio messages at the 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Monegasque had communicated over the radio for more information regarding his strategy, as he felt he was needlessly losing time behind Carlos Sainz.
However, his race engineer Xavi Padros appeared to not have planned a solution for the question and told his driver that Ferrari would report back to him at the end of the race – to which Leclerc questioned, with a seemingly irritated tone at absence of logic.
“The problem is that we have a lot of problems with the radio,” Leclerc said to the media. “One out of four words is not understood by the engineer because there have been problems with our radio for three or four races.
“So we need to fix that, and obviously my tone of voice is quite high because I need to make myself heard.
“I just wanted to make sure that they hadn’t misunderstood me and that I wanted to go aggressive early and not late so it was just about clarification because of our radio issues.”
Poor Ferrari result in Hungary
Ferrari finished in seventh and eighth place as Leclerc dropped behind George Russell, following a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit-lane.
On paper, it would appear that the Scuderia hadn’t displayed good speed but Leclerc disagrees.
“Honestly, I feel like the result is worse than what it felt like,” the Monegasque added to the media. “The first stint was pretty good but then with the slow-stop put us behind even Lance [Stroll].
“And that put us on the backfoot, and I had to push a lot and then we were with Carlos and I lost a bit of time there.
“With the third stint, we pushed again and the car there felt okay. So I feel like the result looks a lot worse than what it is.
“But it is very clear that compared with Lando [Norris] we are still far behind.”
Where is the next F1 2023 race?
With the F1 circus finished in Budapest, we move on to the 2023 Belgian Grand Prix which will be held at Spa-Francorchamps over the weekend of July 28-30.
