Leclerc’s view from the cockpit
Charles Leclerc says Mercedes and George Russell tried to be a little too clever during their fight for the final podium place at the Japanese Grand Prix, with radio messages becoming part of the battle at Suzuka. In the end, Leclerc held on for third after a tense duel that began once both drivers had cleared Lewis Hamilton following the safety car restart.
The fight was far from straightforward. Russell had already gone by Leclerc at the final chicane, only for the Ferrari driver to grab the position back into Turn 1 on the next lap. That was enough to secure what became Leclerc’s second podium in three races, a tidy reward for a race that spent plenty of time flirting with chaos.
The radio chess match
After the race, Leclerc explained that Mercedes, via Russell’s race engineer Marcus Dudley, were feeding instructions that Ferrari was listening to and, rather inconveniently for them, answering in real time through Leclerc’s engineer Bryan Bozzi.
"It was quite tight at some points, and they were also being quite cheeky because I think his engineer was telling him things on the radio," Leclerc told media, including RacingNews365.
"My engineer was telling me what his engineer was telling on the radio, but he was doing the opposite, and that put me under quite a bit of pressure.
"At one point, I think they told me: 'Oh, he’s being told to use everything in the back straight,' or vice versa, or maybe in the main straight, and then for four laps in a row, he was doing exactly the opposite of that.
"So, I understood it pretty quickly, and I could defend.
"But at one point I got surprised in the last corner, but it was quite a fun race.
"Unfortunately, a little bit unlucky for us because of the safety car at the wrong moment.
"I don’t think it would have changed our race significantly, but it made it a little bit more difficult for our second stint for sure."
Leclerc’s summary was pretty blunt: the message traffic was designed to create confusion, and for a while, it worked well enough to keep the Ferrari driver on his toes. Not exactly your standard Sunday drive.
Safety car timing did Ferrari no favors
Leclerc also said the safety car came out at an awkward moment for Ferrari, which made the second stint harder than it needed to be. He did not suggest it completely changed the result, but he was clear that it added another layer of difficulty to an already tight race.
In the end, though, Leclerc got the last word in the podium fight, and Ferrari got another strong finish out of a race that was already packed with enough strategic theater to keep everyone busy.
