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Charles Leclerc put the rumor mill to rest on Thursday, denying the reports that tension was growing within Ferrari after teammate Carlos Sainz won last weekend’s British Grand Prix.
Italian media outlets reported throughout the week that there was division within Maranello after Ferrari opted to pit Sainz instead of Leclerc, who was in the lead on hard tires, during the late safety car. The Monegasque subsequently lost the race as Sainz refused the team’s request to give Leclerc 10 car lengths for clean air.
Later that day, several team members missed being in the photo following Sainz’s first Formula One victory. Italian media outlets reported that Leclerc’s engineers opted not to be in the photo, angry over what transpired.
“It is a shame to see all of this type of things,” Leclerc said at the Austrian Grand Prix to Sky Sports F1. “It is definitely not what is happening inside the team. We are a very united team, we've always been and it's not these difficult races that will make it change.
“Were we disappointed after last weekend? I think we were because speaking about last weekend, we were one-two and we finished one-four so part of the team were disappointed. But this was definitely not the reason whatsoever for not everybody being on the picture.”
It turns out that the team members’ absence was a timing issue, Leclerc revealed. The portion of the team that stayed back for the photo ended up missing the flight home.
“We wanted to do a first picture…but Carlos was not there,” he said. “So we had to delay everything. But there are no hard feelings whatsoever. … Everybody was very happy for Carlos, and this is the feeling that there is inside the team.”
It has been a rough stretch for Leclerc on the track, who was once leading the driver standings but hasn’t won a race in two months. The driver and team boss Mattia Binotto did meet in Monaco this week, Leclerc confirmed per motorsport.com, but he said it was more of a catch-up.
“Well, obviously there’s been quite a lot of talks about the two events in the last few days,” Leclerc said when asked about his and Binotto’s chat at Silverstone and in Monaco. “He was first quite angry with me after Silverstone, because he saw me extremely down, which obviously he understood. But he just wanted to make sure that I was okay, and that I realized that I had done also an amazing job considering the situation I found myself in after the safety car.
“Then in Monaco, this is something that we usually do. He came to Monaco, because the last five races have been quite hard on me. And I just wanted to stay home, disconnect a bit from everything, to be fully 100% for this weekend.”
