Charles Leclerc demand ignored by Ferrari in unheard team radio message

Spanish Grand Prix preview at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya

Charles Leclerc’s demands were ignored by Ferrari mechanics at the Spanish Grand Prix. Leclerc’s race engineer Xavier Marcos Padros asked Leclerc to stop for new hard tyres with 23 laps remaining.

However, Leclerc disagreed with the decision, urging his team to instead choose the soft compound. In fresh team radio from Sunday’s race, Padros told Leclerc: “We’ll box this lap for hards.”

Leclerc responded: “No, no guys, let’s go for the softs.” Pedros replied “copy that” but then remained silent with Leclerc having to interject in the final sector.

The Monegasque asked, “box anyway?” after receiving no update on ignoring his previous plea. As he was heading through the final corners, Leclerc was given the green light to stop but confirmed they would not be taking his advice.

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Padros added: “Yes, box, now box. We are putting on the hard.” Leclerc finished in P11 after another weekend to forget for the 25-year-old.

After the race, Leclerc claimed Ferrari were “doing something wrong” after failing to score points for a third weekend this year. However, the Ferrari star did point the blame at his tyres when asked why he had struggled.

He explained: “We really must analyse all the data, because while the upgrades seem to work as expected, we are always slightly caught out by what is happening with the tyres and we struggle to get them in the right window which is a big problem. We ran the same tyre twice in the same race and we went from having a very bad car to quite a good one towards the end of the race.”

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Ahead of the season. Leclerc stressed he was “vocal within the team” to ensure he got what he wanted. However, he stressed he would continue to trust Ferrari’s strategy calls despite costing the team last year.

The Prancing Horse threw away points due to bad decisions at several races in 2022 including the Monaco, British and Hungarian Grands Prix. Leclerc commented: “In terms of being more vocal when I’m in the car and taking more in hand, the decision, I don’t think this is the way forward.

“Because people don’t understand how little information we have in the car, about the whole situation during a race.” He added: “We won’t win a World Championship if I am making the decisions on my own in the car. This is not how it works and on that I’m convinced.”

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