With Leclerc leading throughout a Safety Car duration in Saturday’s sprint race in Baku, a radio message was relayed to the world feed in which the Ferrari driver seemed reporting a ‘cut’ to his engine.
But inquired about his remark in the post-race interview, Leclerc verified his message had actually been misheard and he had actually in reality been describing a cat which had actually questioned onto the track.
“I said a cat, which is different!” Leclerc explained with a laugh.
“There was a cat in the middle of the road and the safety car had to stop, but I think I was probably the only one who saw that.
“But yeah, out of Turn 1 there was a cat and the Safety Car braked. It wasn’t too bad, but I felt like I had to say it!”
Leclerc protected lead for Sunday’s grand prix throughout Friday certifying and when again headed the field throughout the brand-new ‘Sprint Shootout’, however was helpless to avoid Red Bull’s Sergio Perez from beating him to success on Saturday.
Although Leclerc was pleased with Ferrari’s competitive advance in Baku after a torrid opening 3 races to 2023, the Monegasque confessed the Italian group are still doing not have speed compared to Red Bull.
“I do not understand much of a battle it was, however I attempted my finest,” he said.
“We are still doing not have some speed in the race, this is certainly where our focus is at the minute. It’s held true now for a fair bit.
“So we are dealing with that, looking for something for the races. In certifying, we appear to be okay – having said that, I think we have actually made an advance.
“If you take a look at Australia and here, here we are much better. We are not yet at the level of Red Bull so there’s still a great deal of work to do, however I’m a bit better with the car.
“Once you start with the tire deterioration, that’s when Checo began to disappear. Max [Verstappen] began to come back. From that minute onward, we had a bit of a downside.”
