Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc has said he needs to “shut up” over the radio, after he reacted angrily to his team during the Singapore Grand Prix. Speaking before this weekend’s race in Russia, the 21-year-old admitted his obsession with victory had overcome his control at Marina Bay. Ferrari have won the last three races and Lewis Hamilton warned in Sochi they hold the advantage as the season enters its final third.
Leclerc won at Spa and Monza and was leading in Singapore when Ferrari’s pit strategy helped enable his teammate, Sebastian Vettel, to take the lead and ultimately win. Leclerc was repeatedly vocal in his frustration on track, which he conceded was wrong.
“My reaction was well over what it should be and that shows I’ve still got a lot to learn,” he said. “That won’t happen again in the future. In the car it’s always very difficult. There’s a lot of adrenaline. I wake up in the morning thinking about victory, I go to sleep thinking about victory, so sometimes it might be hard.
“But I need to control myself more and, how can I say it politely? Just shut up instead of speaking on the radio. I’ll learn from it, and try for it not to happen again.”
Ferrari were unexpectedly quick in Singapore, their car performing strongly through the slow corners, and appear to have made a real step forward. Hamilton, who leads the drivers’ standings by 65 points from his Mercedes teammate, Valtteri Bottas, and is 96 points ahead of Leclerc in third, said the Scuderia were on the front foot.
“We will not be favourites at the next six races,” he said. “We know how fast Ferrari have been on the straights, so for us there isn’t a short-term fix, but there are other areas we can do better in.”
Mercedes made the wrong pit call for Hamilton in Singapore and the world champion said his team needed to rediscover the form that took them to 10 wins from 12 races this season. “At the last three races, we haven’t extracted 100%. That is what we need to get back to,” he said.
Mercedes, he insisted, would continue in an incessant pursuit of improvement. “Even if this weekend doesn’t go as planned – and the long straights are likely to suit Ferrari – it is not going to change my opinion as to what we will achieve. We will make it difficult for every other team this year, next year, and potentially the years after.”
