The Ferrari driver had improved provisional pole position with his final run in Q3 at the Circuit of the Americas on Friday evening, only for Verstappen to pip him by 0.005s before the Red Bull racer lost his last lap for going too wide out of 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, as Leclerc was initially despondent at being pipped to pole – he exhaled “for f***s sake, for f***s sake” at hearing Verstappen’s time was 1m34.718s versus his 1m34.723s – then shocked into thinking it was he who had been demoted.
