"I'll say what I want": Charles Leclerc shuns Ferrari press officer in front of the media

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc shunned the team's press officer before his media interaction after a disappointing qualifying session on Saturday, June 8, for the 2024 Canadian GP. The Monagasque driver finished the session in P11 and failed to make it out of the Q2 session, similar to his teammate Carlos Sainz, who finished a place behind him in P12.

The Ferrari duo never looked comfortable at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve throughout Saturday and also struggled in the dry FP3 session. Heading into qualifying, both drivers could not match the pace of rivals McLaren, Mercedes, and even some midfield teams such as RB and Williams.

Before his interview with Canal+, Charles Leclerc was in conversation with his press officer but shunned her and said:

"Yeah, it's ok. I'll say what I want."

In his post-Quali interview with F1.com, the 26-year-old reflected on the Q2 exit which saw him fail to reach Q3 for the first time in 22 races, saying:

“Just slow, slow all day. Similar issues also to this morning, I had like a sensor issue, which was very annoying. The management of the session as well wasn’t the best, I think. All in all, it’s been a tough session.

"I would say that the biggest problem is the pace, we are so slow in the dry at the moment, that we don’t understand. It’s a bit strange to go from a really, really good weekend in Monaco in terms of pace, and get here and be on the back foot. We’ll look into it.”

Charles Leclerc reviews his chances for the Canadian GP main race on Sunday

Charles Leclerc stated that despite starting P11, he was confident about his chances in the main race and was hopeful that they could get a better result by executing everything perfectly.

As quoted by the aforementioned source, the Ferrari driver said:

“I’m not sure. I still feel confident that tomorrow [in] the race we can put everything together and have a better result. However, until now we haven’t proved it on the dry, so let’s see what are the conditions and we’ll try to maximize the result. I think that’s the main thing in those races like that.

"We just need to make sure that we take the maximum points available. This weekend we haven’t been great, we’ll focus on that after the weekend, to understand where we lacked. For now, the best thing we can do is focus on tomorrow.”

Charles Leclerc is currently P2 in the driver's championship with 138 points and trails Max Verstappen by 31 points after his Monaco GP triumph. He has not finished outside of the top four this season so far and has been one of the better drivers this year.