Leclerc and Sainz’s unexpected road trip as Ferrari weekend gets ‘worse’

Michelle Foster
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Charles Leclerc speaking with Carlos Sainz

Carlos Sainz's part in Charles Leclerc's 'worse' ending to his Baku weekend

A crash in qualifying followed by a P9 in the grand prix, Charles Leclerc thought his Azerbaijan weekend “couldn’t get any worse”, and then came Carlos Sainz – and the van.

Former teammates at Ferrari, Leclerc and Sainz have continued their friendship into the Spaniard’s new Williams era, the two often travelling to grands prix together.

Charles Leclerc: I thought it couldn’t get any worse but…

This time, as they climbed aboard their flight to return to Monaco after Baku, they had two contrasting tales to tell.

While Sainz qualified an impressive P2 as a few drops of rain and two red flags in Q3 helped his cause in qualifying, Leclerc was the cause of the first of those two reds as he binned his Ferrari SF-25 at Turn 15. That meant he lined up 10th on the grid as he didn’t set a time that session, with Sainz a season’s best P2 on the grid.

The Spaniard put in a perfect race, bringing his Williams home in third place to record his first podium with his new team, whereas Leclerc was down in ninth and so despondent with Ferrari’s pace that he didn’t care that his teammate Lewis Hamilton hadn’t followed team orders.

But that wasn’t the worst of it…

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Flying home from Baku, the plane that Leclerc and Sainz were travelling in was diverted to Genoa due to a storm, leaving them and their travelling companions stranded.

Eager to get home, they took matters into their own hands.

Posting a video on social media, Leclerc started: “So after a very difficult weekend in Baku, I thought it couldn’t get any worse but…”

Changing the camera view to outside of the car as he went through a tunnel, Leclerc then panned to the man in the driver’s seat.

A grinning Carlos Sainz.

“We are driving a van!” enthused the Williams podium finisher.

Laughing, Leclerc asked: “Where are we, Carlos?”

The Spaniard replied: “In the middle of Italy.”

Leclerc:”Why?”

Sainz:”We were diverted for a storm, we couldn’t land in Nice. So we landed in the middle of Italy, we rented a van, and we are now into Monaco.”

Leclerc: “Ah nice.

Sainz: “Two-hour drive, that we will make it for an-hour-and-a half.”

“No!” exclaimed Leclerc.

“No, no, never,” Sainz denied.

Leclerc was one of the first over to Sainz to congratulate him on his debut podium as a Williams driver.

“I’m really happy for him,” said the Ferrari driver. “I mean, obviously, we are travelling to basically all the races together, so we’ve had time to talk, and he’s been so unlucky since the beginning of the year, and I don’t think it was ever a lack of speed or whatsoever.

“I think it was more a fortune thing, which luckily today he overcame, and I’m very happy to see him on the podium.”

Sainz’s podium elevated him to 12th in the Drivers’ standings on 31 points, but he’s still some way off his teammate Alex Albon’s 70.

Between the two of them, they’ve put distance between Williams in fifth place and Racing Bulls in P6, the gap up to 29 points in the Constructors’ standings.

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