Scuderia Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have hit out on the Italian news media outlets after many press reports regarding a possible disharmony within the Maranello team.
After the season-opener at the Bahrain International Circuit, which indeed proved to be a very disappointing first race of the Scuderia, media reports originating from Italy have been coming out on a daily basis, talking about various dramas that are supposedly going on behind closed doors in Maranello.
One key topic which the press focused on what Charles Leclerc supposedly asking for a private meeting with president John Elkann to talk about the difficult start to the season and the direction that the Ferrari wants to take. The media also insisted there is strong disagreement between chief executive officer Benedetto Vigna and race director Laurent Mekies, which could determine the French engineer to leave Ferrari.
However, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz wanted to strongly deny any kind of issues within the Maranello team, with the Monegasque driver describing the speculation of him privately meeting with John Elkann as “absolutely untrue.”
“There have been loads of rumours around the team, which, for once, 90% of them were completely unfounded,” Charles Leclerc pointed out on media day ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix – “So I don’t know where it is coming from, and to be honest, I don’t want to spend even any energy on trying to find where it’s coming from. We just need to be on it and focused on ourselves.” – he added.
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Charles Leclerc admitted that following the Bahrain Grand Prix, before going back to Ferrari’s headquarters, he was indeed concerned that the media reports could in fact be true, but pointed out that it was not the case, with all of the team “fully positive” and focused on improving the SF-23 car to recover the gap to Red Bull.
“I obviously saw these rumours, and then I went to Maranello. At first I was like, I’m not sure how the team is going to react to it. But then we had a meeting with the whole team, with all the Ferrari employees, and I was really surprised. Everybody is fully on it and fully positive still, which is great. We need to all push in the same direction, as I said, this is the most important to me.” – Charles explained.
Carlos Sainz shared the view of his Maranello teammate and also hit out at the recent “rumours”, pointing out that the morale in the team is “a lot better than what the news makes it sound like.”
“If you look back at this last weekend and how many rumours there have been around. It seems like the place is not in a great moment, but I can tell you it is so clear to us what we need to improve, how we need to do it, what are the short, medium and long term targets, that I’m actually very surprised at how some people back at home have been trying to destabilise the team. Some call it a crisis but we’ve only done one race, it’s impossible to judge a team’s performance after just one race, and we are the first ones not happy with how this first race went. We are the most worried about it and we are the most affected by it and we’re going to try as much as possible to improve. I’m quite calm about it, I see people at the factory are committed, focused and with a very clear target in mind and I include myself in it.” – Carlos Sainz concluded.
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