Charles Leclerc dismisses reports of disunity at Ferrari after Carlos Sainz’s victory

Reports suggested that some of the Ferrari team refused to partake in the celebrations and post-race team photo after Sainz’s win

Charles Leclerc has rubbished reports of disunity at Ferrari in the wake of Carlos Sainz’s first win in Formula 1 at the British Grand Prix on Sunday.

The Spaniard - in his 150th race - was on pole position and won his first Grand Prix after pitting during the safety car period late on for soft tyres, ultimately overtaking his stricken teammate Leclerc who was on hard compound tyres.

Leclerc - who is ahead of Sainz in the Championship leaderboard - was unhappy with Ferrari’s decision not to pit him during the safety car for fresher rubber; he ended up finishing fourth.

In the past day or so, reports have emerged that some of Leclerc’s team were so unhappy at the way the race finale panned out that they baulked at having to partake in the overall team celebrations and photo after the chequered flag.

“I have been told – and I trust the source – an ugly episode that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Silverstone race,” wrote Alberto Antonini, noted as Ferrari’s former press officer, in a column for formulapassion.it.

“Part of the Ferrari staff allegedly refused, at least initially, to attend the podium ceremony and photo op. If true, as I fear, this is not a good sign. A little healthy rivalry inside the garage is fine, it is fine for each mechanic and each technician to cheer for ‘his’ driver, but the common interest must be to aim to win.”

However, speaking before this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, Leclerc moved to dismiss those claims and insisted there were no “hard feelings” in the Scuderia camp.

“It is a shame to see all these type of things because it is definitely not happening inside the team,” Leclerc said. “We are a very united team, we have always been.”

“It’s not this difficult races that will make it change. Speaking about last weekend, we were 1-2 and finished 1-4, so of course some part of the team were disappointed but this was definitely not the reason or whatsoever for not everybody being on the picture.”

“Actually I think half of the team that were in the picture missed the plane to go back home. It was quite tricky. Actually we wanted to do the picture first but Carlos was not there. So we had to delay everything. There are no hard feelings or whatsoever.”

Leclerc is currently third in the Drivers Championship, 43 points behind leader Max Verstappen and 11 ahead of teammate Sainz, heading into round 11 of the 2022 season this weekend.