F1: After Sochi Fiasco, Leclerc Says Trust In Vettel Still 'Unchanged'

Ferrari's fiasco of team orders combined with Sebastian Vettel's car failure ended their winning streak in the ongoing 2019 F1 season.

Soon after his pit stop, Vettel was forced to pull over due to an engine problem, while Charles Leclerc failed to go past the Mercedes drivers and settled for a third place. Lewis Hamilton extended his lead in the drivers' championship by winning the Russian Grand Prix on Sunday.

According to the team radio conversations during the race in Sochi, Vettel and Leclerc had a pre-race agreement. Apparently, the four-time champion, who started on P3, refused to follow it after he had a fantastic start. Within seconds after the lights went off, Vettel raced ahead of Hamilton and Leclerc in the first corner to lead the race.

The German was then asked to give Leclerc his place back according to an agreement which said, Leclerc would stay left at the start to pull Vettel past Hamilton, and in return, the former would get back his lead if he lost it in the process.

Vettel denied to swap places because of his superior start and he was the fastest on the track at the time. Later in the race, Leclerc ultimately passed Vettel by making a pit stop first and soon after the race, he was quick enough to say that the trust between the Ferrari teammates was still unchanged.

“Yeah I think the trust is unchanged and we need to trust each other because it’s usually important for the benefit of the team in some situations to know that you can count on each other in the car and vice versa, both ways,” he told formula1.com.

“Well, I think everything was respected. At the start I went to the left to give Seb the slipstream, I knew he would overtake, he knew that then we just had to do the swap back and we did it at the pit stop later on in the race. And then our race went downwards as soon as Seb had the issue, the Safety Car didn’t come at a great time for us and yeah, everything was more complicated from then on," Leclerc further added.

A furious Vettel retired following an MGU-K failure and damage to the insulation on his hybrid power unit and that introduced a Virtual Safety Car. Both the Mercedes drivers, Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas immediately pitted and emerged with their respective leads at P1 and P2 with Leclerc at P3. That positions remained intact until the chequered flag.