Vasseur confident tensions between Ferrari drivers will settle

Fred Vasseur has reassured that there "won't be an issue" despite Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz fuming after their feud at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Sainz and Leclerc finished third and fourth behind the Mercedes team-mates in Sin City on Saturday night, the Spaniard beating Leclerc to the final podium position by 2.3 seconds.

Leclerc was furious as he felt that while he had been "respectful" and "nice" to Sainz, the Spaniard had ignored team orders by overtaking him when he left the pits on lap 31.

Leclerc was told by his race engineer Bryan Bozzi that Sainz had "been told to not overtake but it is really close, you might be just in front. He has been told to not put you under pressure".

The Monegasque driver did come out ahead only for Sainz to swoop around him at Turn 4 and take the fourth, which became third when the team-mates overtook Max Verstappen.

Leclerc launched into an X-rated tirade on the cooldown lap, dropping no fewer than six F-bombs before he realised the radio was on and apologised.

He has since declared that he "will be thinking about myself only" in the final two races with Sainz as his team-mate.

Vasseur has shut that down, saying they'll discuss what happened and after that, he expects no issues.

"I'm not worried at all," the Ferrari team principal told the media including PlanetF1.com. "I think it's always the same story that they have to make comments or they don't have to make comments.

"They are doing comments on the [cooldown] lap and they don't have always the full picture. We will discuss and it won't be an issue."

The team boss shed some light on the antics leading up to Sainz passing Leclerc, calling the build-up to it a "really difficult" situation.

Sainz had been told prior to his second pit stop to let Leclerc pass him as the latter had better pace, while at the same time Sainz was arguing with Ferrari as he wanted to stop for new tyres.

He started to come into the pits, but Ferrari weren't ready for him and he completed another lap before stopping on lap 28. Leclerc pitted three laps later and Sainz promptly overtook him.

"We wanted to avoid to fight," Vasseur explained. "But at this stage you have to be on the [tyre] management side, and Carlos was already at lap three or four of the stint.

"I think it's more the fact that the situation was really difficult for everybody.

"We will have to discuss this, but at this stage of the race we were discussing with Carlos for the pit stop, I was explaining that he was in the shadow of Tsunoda perhaps, and he wanted to pit, we wanted to keep him on track.

"We were discussing this and on top we had to swap and it was a bit of chaos, but when they are into the car they have their own vision of the race."

When asked if a better result was achievable, he replied: "I don't think so. Overall, I believe Mercedes was the fastest. Maybe, with a different approach to the weekend… But today, with the positions we had on the grid, I don't think we could have done more."

Scoring 27 points to McLaren's 15, Ferrari closed the gap in the fight for the Constructors' title to 24 points with two races remaining.

"I'd rather be 24 points behind than 200. The championship is still open, and anything can happen," said the Frenchman. "On paper, Qatar isn't the best track for us, but we've had tough weekends where we still managed to do well.

"We'll do our best to put pressure on McLaren for the final race. This is very important because anything can happen in the last Grand Prix. We'll push until the last corner of the last lap of the last race."

 

 


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