Leclerc rejects Hadjar’s Ferrari claim as “nonsense”

Charles Leclerc rejected Isack Hadjar’s claim that Max Verstappen would have won the Singapore Grand Prix by a larger margin in a Ferrari, calling the comparison “nonsense” ahead of the United States Grand Prix in Austin. Hadjar, Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate, said Ferrari had the fastest car in Singapore and that Verstappen would have won by more if he had been driving Ferrari’s SF26. Hadjar also said Red Bull’s car remained difficult to drive. Those were his assessments of the rival cars, not independently established measurements of their relative pace. Leclerc, who finished second to Verstappen in Singapore, said drivers cannot confidently judge machinery they do not use. “Isack has no idea what kind of car we drive, and I have no idea what kind of car he drives,” he said. He pointed to the tight field and the effect of optimizing a car’s package, saying small margins can make performance difficult to predict. In his view, those factors may have more influence than expected differences between cars. His comments rejected Hadjar’s hypothetical comparison without asserting that Ferrari or Red Bull had the faster car. Leclerc identified Mercedes as a possible exception to...