The Ferrari driver had improved provisional pole position with his final run in Q3 in Austin on qualifying, only for Verstappen to pip him by 0.005s before he had his time deleted for exceeding track limits at the penultimate corner.
That cemented Leclerc’s third pole position of the 2023 season but was followed by an exchange with his Ferrari engineer Xavier Marcos Padros.
Leclerc was initially despondent at being pipped to pole, exhaling on the radio: “For f***s sake, for f***s sake,” at hearing Verstappen’s time was 1m34.718s versus his 1m34.723s, before being shocked into thinking it was he who had been demoted.
Speaking in the post-qualifying press conference, Leclerc said: “I just had a heart attack because my engineer told me ‘track limits…’ then ‘…for Verstappen’.
“And when I heard ‘track limits’ I punched the steering wheel and my helmet and [then] I heard ‘for Verstappen’ and then I was [thinking], ‘ok, that’s better news for us!’
“That’s why in the moment I just said to Xavi, ‘please, tell me the name before the track limits because I got too excited’.”
Considering if he still expected Verstappen to be a victory candidate in the grand prix in Texas despite the Dutchman now starting down in sixth, Leclerc said “for sure, as always”.
He added: “But Red Bull is always very strong and obviously Max this year is always on it. So, for sure he will be a threat and up there.”
Leclerc bettered his initial Q3 1m34.829s time on his second go but described his first effort in the final part of qualifying as “quite a bit better” than the lap that ultimately got him pole.
When asked to explain why that was the case by Autosport, Leclerc said: “The first one was much cleaner – I put more of less everything together.
“The second lap was a bit more ‘let’s go for it and see what happens’. But when you have this kind of mentality, then you have a bit more mistakes.
“All in all, I gained more taking risks that what I’ve lost with a small mistake, so it was just a bit more difficult to put everything together once I started really pushing in that last lap.
“But it paid off, so I’m happy.”
