A three-four finish would normally be good news for Ferrari, but there wasn’t a lot of harmony internally after the 2024 Las Vegas GP ended. Not for the first time, Charles Leclerc was unhappy that Carlos Sainz refused to let him by in the race which led to him lashing out with some rather unsavory comments on the team radio. Sainz, however, has responded.
“We have decided not to talk [about this] with the media,” Sainz revealed after the race. “We will discuss with Charles what happened between us.”
“I never turn on the radio and I don’t talk to the media because it’s not a nice thing to do and it’s not necessary,” the Madrid-born driver added, suggesting that he didn’t like how his teammate threw him under the bus publicly. Leclerc even dropped the F-bomb when his race engineer asked him to ‘pick it up’ without realizing that his radio was on.
Bryan : and pick up please.
: Fucking pick up what the fuck you want. And the radio is on, I am sorry.
Charles’ frustration in the last scene is… pic.twitter.com/WRHKHoSQhZ
— 에클레어 (@sharr__leclerc) November 24, 2024
But what happened between them? As has been the case many times in 2024, Leclerc found himself behind Sainz but felt he was faster which is why he wanted himself to be prioritized. However, from the Spaniard’s point of view, it was not all that simple.
“I had been asking to stop for two laps. I wanted to let Charles pass because he was faster, but I knew there was Hamilton behind, so I was also asking to stop because there was so much graining,” Sainz justified. “It wasn’t a nice situation and it wasn’t easy to handle. That’s how it was, that’s why I prefer to analyze later.”
What does this mean for Ferrari?
To be fair to Sainz, the communication between him and his race engineer Riccardo Adami was not top-notch in Las Vegas, with several disagreements popping up on the team radio. With Hamilton on Sainz’s toes and Leclerc just ahead, the team asked the 30-year-old to box, which he did, only for the Maranello-based outfit to bail out at the last moment.
Sainz lost a lot of time as a result and also invited chances of getting a penalty since he had already crossed the pit line before rejoining the track. Overall, it wasn’t a very bad weekend for Ferrari because now they are just 24 points behind McLaren in the Championship standings as opposed to 36 when they started the weekend.
Theodore Kravitz says that he asked Fred Vasseur about the pit entry matter, and was told that the new race director Rui Marques treated it as a track limits Infringement
— Junaid #JB17 (@JunaidSamodien_) November 24, 2024
But what would bother them is Sainz and Leclerc’s ability to work together in the remaining two races of the 2024 season. It will also be Sainz’s final two outings with Ferrari since he will join Williams in 2025, leaving his seat for seven-time World Champion Hamilton.
