Charles Leclerc was left furious with AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda during Q1 at the Brazilian Grand Prix, after feeling that he was blocked by the Japanese driver during the session.
With rain having fallen prior to Friday’s qualifying session, drivers initially ventured onto the circuit on the green-walled Intermediate tyres, with the conditions having initially not been dry enough for slicks.
Due to the rain easing, the track ramped up rapidly, with the circuit having produced quicker lap-times at almost every circulation.
Pierre Gasly was the first to brave the red-walled Soft tyres, which quickly became the compound to be on, as the Frenchman went to the top of the leaderboard.
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This resulted in a flurry of action in the pit-lane, as everyone made their way in to ditch the Inters and fit the slicks.
With the surface continuing to dry, no one was certain to beat the drop, given that the dry compound became faster constantly.
As a result, there were some frantic scenes on the circuit, as some drivers who were performing a cooldown lap blocked those on a hot lap, something that infuriated Leclerc.
Leclerc was looking at risk of the bottom five, especially after being forced to abort a strong lap due to being blocked by Tsunoda, someone the Monegasque wasn’t pleased with.
“Tsunoda come on,” Leclerc said over the radio whilst aborting his lap.
Leclerc did in the end get a fast-enough lap in and ended the first part of qualifying in P12, six-tenths clear of Nicholas Latifi, who was 16th.
Tsunoda was one of the five to be eliminated in the opening part of the session, after succumbing to P19, after finding himself 3.1 seconds off the leading pace set by Lando Norris.
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Whilst the Ferrari driver was comfortably safe in the end, he still had a few more words to say about AlphaTauri’s Japanese driver.
“Yuki, Yuki it’s a joke, a f**king joke,” added Leclerc at the end of the first part of qualifying.
This wasn’t the end of Leclerc’s qualifying troubles, as he went on to claim P10, which will end up being ninth, as his team-mate Carlos Sainz has a five-place grid penalty for yet another engine component change, the theme of the Scuderia’s season.