With Leclerc leading during a Safety Car period in Saturday’s sprint race in Baku, a radio message wa🗹s broadcast to the world feed in which the Ferrari driver appeared to be reporting a ‘cut’ to his engine. 

But asked about his c🌟omment in the post-race press conference, Leclerc confirmed his message had been misheard and he had in fact been referring to a cat which had wondered onto the track.

“I said a ܫcat, which is different!” Leclerc explained with a laugh.

“There was a cat in the middle of the road and the safety car had to stop, butಞ I think I was probably the 💮only one who saw that.

"But yeah, out of Turn 1 there was a cat and the Safety Car braked. It wasn't too bad, b🍌ut I felt like I had to say it!”

Leclerc secured pole position for Sunday’s grand prix during Friday qualifying and once again headed the field during the new ‘Sprint Shootout’, but was powerless to prevent Red Bull’s 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Sergio Perez from beating him to victory on Saturday. 

Although Leclerc was delighted with Ferrari’s competitive step forward in Baku after a torrid opening three races to 2023, the Monegasque adm🎶itted the Italian team are still lacking pace compa🔯red to Red Bull. 

"I don't kn🧸ow much of a fight it was, but I tried my best," he said.&nb𓆏sp;

"We are still lacking some pace in the race, this is definitely where our focus is ✨at the moment. It's been the case now for quit🉐e a bit.

"So we are working on that, trying to find something for the races. In qualifying, we seem to be OK - having saiꦿd that, I believe we have made a ꧟step forward.

"If you look at Australia and here, here we are better. We are not yet at the level of Red Bull so ▨there's still a lot of work to do, but I'm a bit happier with the car.

"Once you start with the tyre degradation, that's when Checo started to go away. Max [Verstappen] sta🦩rted to come back. From that mom♕ent onward, we had a little bit of a disadvantage."