Charles Leclerc fumed on the Ferrari team radio as he bemoaned his team’s ‘f**king embarrassing’ performance at the Las Vegas Grand Prix qualifying.
Ferrari struggled in qualifying as Lewis Hamilton finished dead last as his damning radio team message emerged after the session.
As for Leclerc, he could only qualify ninth for Saturday’s race – behind the likes of Racing Bulls’ pair Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson, as well as Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.
The Monegasque made his feelings known on the radio immediately after crossing the line in qualifying.
He slammed Ferrari’s performance, calling it ‘f**king embarrassing’ in an expletive-filled, X-rated rant.
“My god, embarrassing, f**king embarrassing,” the 28-year-old exclaimed. “F**king hell, I don’t get how we can be so off the pace… there’s like zero grip, zero f**king grip.”
Charles Leclerc qualified ninth for the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Image: Getty
Speaking to the media after the session, Leclerc said that his frustration with Ferrari’s wet-weather performance can be traced all the way back to when he joined the Scuderia in 2019.
“Unfortunately it’s not [just] today,” he explained. “It’s been like that since I joined the team we’ve been struggling massively at finding the grip in those kind of conditions. It’s hugely frustrating because it’s probably been my biggest strength in the junior categories and then.”
Charles Leclerc made his feelings clear on the radio after Ferrari’s qualifying session. Image: Getty
Leclerc added: “We are doing something wrong. I have no idea what that is because we’ve turned the car upside down. We’ve had Lewis and obviously Carlos before joined that joined other teams who could tell us the feeling they had with the other cars. It’s just extremely difficult to find the grip with our car.
“Very, very unpredictable with our car which causes us to do a lot of mistakes. It’s not that we are not trying because as a team we have tried absolutely everything. For some reason we just haven’t found out way yet.”
Hamilton and Leclerc were under pressure to deliver in Las Vegas after Ferrari president John Elkann told his drivers to ‘talk less’ after the Brazilian Grand Prix.
