Charles Leclerc launches explosive rant in untelevised X-rated team radio message

Charles Leclerc has faced yet another difficult qualifying session at the British Grand Prix — prompting the Monegasque driver to launch into an untelevised, X-rated rant.

“I am so f*cking sh*t!” the driver exclaimed at the end of the Q3, which saw him forced to settle for sixth on the starting grid.

Charles Leclerc launches into X-rated rant after frustrating Silverstone quali

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

“F*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck!”

Those were the initial words of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc after yet another difficult qualifying session, which saw him set a time good enough for only sixth-fastest on the grid for the British Grand Prix.

“F*ck that,” the driver ranted in an untelevised radio message.

“So f*cking sh*t I am. I am so f*cking sh*t. That’s all I am.”

Those certainly weren’t the words Scuderia Ferrari would have wanted to hear from either of its drivers — but for the driver who topped FP3, anything less than the front row certainly would have been a disappointment.

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The Monegasque driver seemed to calm down slightly before he headed to the media pen, but his frustration remained. As he told assembled journalists, including PlanetF1.com, the session didn’t “get away” from him so much as he let it slip through his fingers.

“I’m not doing the job,” Leclerc admitted, “and I think since the beginning of the season, I’ve been performing very well in the races.

“Looking back at races, there are actually not many races where I will go back to change something that I’ve done inside the car.

“Unfortunately, when I look back at qualifying — which used to be my strength — there are many qualifyings where I would like to go back and to change something, because every time I get to Q3, for some reason, it’s not clicking at the moment. We’ve had good qualifyings, but we didn’t have great qualifyings.

“And again, this used to be my strength, so I’m not happy with the level that I’m showing in qualifying.

“We’ve got issues for sure, particularly today from Q2 onwards. We were a bit fighting with something inside the car, but it’s not an excuse. I need to be better.”

Leclerc continued on to say that keeping the car on the track wasn’t the hard part today; in fact, the issues he’s facing are “very specific.”

“It’s not a balance issue, it’s not a grip issue,” he said.

“I don’t want to go into the detail, but it’s something very weird that we’ve got to fight into the car, and especially when they are high speed, it makes it even more difficult. But I hope we can resolve it.

“The good thing — if we can say it’s a good thing — is that tomorrow we won’t have any of this, and for sure, we won’t have any problems of that sort.”

But even the comfort of Ferrari’s strong race-day performance isn’t enough to temper the frustration of having to start so far back down the grid.

“Starting P6 again, it makes it so difficult because every time we are starting the race by starting to come back, and then once we are back at the front, people that have had a clean race just have an advantage on us,” he explained.

“So we need to be better in qualifying.”

Again, he reiterated that the team had a “strong” car and a “stable platform,” particularly pointing out the fact that Ferrari had outperformed the ever-dominant McLaren in the high-speed sections.

But it’s just “this one issue that we are having at the moment is also making it a bit more difficult.”

“I think the car is good,” Leclerc concluded. “We just need to put everything together.”

Charles Leclerc will start the British Grand Prix from sixth on the grid, just behind team-mate Lewis Hamilton in fifth.

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