World Championship leader Charles Leclerc doesn’t expect a fight with his teammate to cloud the atmosphere in the Ferrari garage. First, because Verstappen will arrive, “Max and Red Bull are extremely strong and as soon as they fix the little problems they will be the biggest threat. although that doesn’t mean that Carlos is less strong than Max…”.
The Monegasque said about Sainz in Jeddah: “When I put on the helmet I want to beat Carlos, just like he wants to beat me. But at the same time, We are aware that this is a great opportunity for both of us, an accident this year would cost us much more than it would have cost last year. We have never had any problem with this, we have always respected each other a lot and the relationship is very good off the track. Nothing has changed and I don’t think it will change in the long term.”
All in all, he hopes that the euphoria at Ferrari will not be a drag on the Saudi Arabian GP: “It seems to be going well, because we had a great weekend, but I want us to arrive the same as the first race, focused on ourselves to do the best job possible. It is a completely different circuit, with different characteristics, and we have to see what our level of competitiveness is, because it is very tight with Red Bull.”
Regarding his triumph in Bahrain, last Sunday: “It tastes quite different (from the previous two, in Belgium and Italy 2019). It’s fine, like in Spa and Monza, but here it was a much cleaner weekend. So it was very good, but somewhere in the race I didn’t manage the situation well. This time I had everything under control, I liked that a lot.” And about his fight with Verstappen in Sakhir, he says: “I didn’t use the battery on the main straight, it wasn’t easy to manage, but that way I could use it on the second straight together with the DRS. It was very important to keep the lead in Bahrain.”