Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur says Charles Leclerc’s expletive-laden radio message after the Las Vegas Grand Prix is ​​not a problem, as the Monegasque vented that “being nice scares the hell out of me”.

Leclerc looked on course to take an overcut on teammate Carlos Sainz during the final round of stops, as the Spaniard made his case on the radio for an earlier pit stop.

Sainz made the call at the end of lap 28, one lap after he entered the pit entrance and then jumped because the Ferrari pit crew was not ready for him. Leclerc made his stop three laps later and emerged just ahead of Sainz.

But Sainz ignored a radio call not to overtake the outgoing Leclerc, and kept the move at Turn 4 to take fourth place – and later moved into third as the two passed Max Verstappen.

Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Leclerc was outraged by this and made his feelings clear to engineer Bryan Bozzi over the radio at the end of the race.

Leclerc’s radio after the race
Bozzi: Pick up, please.
Leclerc: Yes, whatever you want, as always.
BB: Charles, you’ve done your job. Okay, thanks.
CL: Yes, yes, yes. Yes, I did my job, but being nice is a problem for me all the time. It’s not even being nice, it’s just being respectful.
BB: Karel…
CL: I know I should shut up, but at some point it’s always the same, so oh my fucking god.
BB: Okay, but anyway, you did the right thing for the team.
BB: And please pick up.
CL: Yeah, yeah, pick up what the fuck we want. Shit, shit, shit… and the radio is on. I’m sorry, that was on me.
CL: And my bad for the first stint, I also drove shit.

Vasseur said the incident was under discussion but did not feel it would be an issue between his two drivers. He explained that while Ferrari tried not to lose time by letting the drivers fight, Leclerc also had to bring his tires in slowly.

He said Leclerc’s tirade was probably down to him not having the full picture, and that it was a difficult situation to avoid. He added that Sainz’s earlier attempt at a pit stop had been rejected due to the gap in traffic.

“I’m not worried at all. I think it’s always the same story: they should comment or not,” Vasseur said.

Frederic Vasseur, team principal and general manager of Scuderia Ferrari

Photo by: Ferrari

“They comment on the (delay) lap and they don’t always have the full picture. We will discuss it and it will not be a problem.

“We have to avoid fighting, but at this stage I think when you open the stint you have to be on the management side, and Carlos was already in the third or fourth round of the stints.

“I think it’s more due to the fact that the situation was very difficult for everyone, but we will discuss it tonight. It won’t be a problem.

“When we discussed with Carlos before the pit stop, I explained that he was in the shadow of Lawson, Tsunoda maybe, and he wanted to pit, we wanted to keep him on track.

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

Photos from the Las Vegas GP race