The Ferrari driver had improved provisional pole position with his final run in Q3 in Austin on qualifying, only for Verstappen to pip him by 0.005s before he had his time deleted for exceeding track limits at the penultimate corner.
That cemented Leclerc’s third pole position of the 2023 season but was followed by an exchange with his Ferrari engineer Xavier Marcos Padros.
Leclerc was initially despondent at being pipped to pole, exhaling on the radio: “For f***s sake, for f***s sake,” at hearing Verstappen’s time was 1m34.718s versus his 1m34.723s, before being shocked into thinking it was he who had been demoted.
Speaking in the post-qualifying press conference, Leclerc said: “I just had a heart attack because my engineer told me ‘track limits…’ then ‘…for Verstappen’.
“And when I heard ‘track limits’ I punched the steering wheel and my helmet and [then] I heard ‘for Verstappen’ and then I was [thinking], ‘ok, that’s better news for us!’
“That’s why in the moment I just said to Xavi, ‘please, tell me the name before the track limits because I got too excited’.”
Source: Autosport