Leclerc Slams Ferrari: Calls Vegas Qualifying “Embarrassing”

Leclerc: “Embarrassing” Ferrari performance in Las Vegas qualifying

Charles Leclerc called Ferrari’s performance in the Las Vegas Grand Prix qualifying “embarrassing” and pointed out that it was a demonstration of the problems the team has faced in rainy conditions since his arrival. Leclerc could only qualify ninth for Saturday’s race, while his teammate, Lewis Hamilton, finished in last position. The team’s star drivers arrived in Las Vegas this week, downplaying recent critical comments from Ferrari president John Elkann, who had said the pair needed to “focus on driving and talking less” and improve their own performance.

My god, embarrassing, fuck, embarrassing. Fuck, I don’t understand how we can be so out of rhythm… There’s no grip, zero grip.

Charles Leclerc

The Friday night session began with such heavy rain that the teams opted to switch to extreme rain tires instead of slicks, something that has become unusual in the recent past of F1. Speaking to the media shortly after, Leclerc explained that his frustration with Ferrari’s performance in wet conditions goes back to when he joined the team in 2019. “Unfortunately, it’s not just today,” Leclerc told F1 TV. “It’s been like this since I joined the team; we’ve been struggling enormously to find grip in those kinds of conditions. It’s very frustrating because it’s probably been my biggest strength in the junior categories and then…” “We’re 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 [from] other teams who could tell us the feeling they had with the other cars. It’s extremely difficult to find grip with our car. Very, very unpredictable with our car, which makes us make a lot of mistakes. It’s not that we’re not trying because as a team we’ve tried absolutely everything. For some reason, we still haven’t found our way.” Hamilton, who, like Leclerc, has been considered a master of wet conditions in the past, struggled from the start, as he was eliminated in the first session. “The car felt great in Free Practice 3 and, honestly, I thought it was going to go well. Yes, I was very, very excited,” said Hamilton. “I thought we would finally have a good day, but it wasn’t like that.”