Charles Leclerc says he welcomes Max Verstappen's aggressive tactics against Lando Norris as the pair's clashes work in his favor in the championship.
In Sunday's Mexico City Grand Prix, Verstappen received two penalties for his forceful moves against Norris, which ultimately allowed Leclerc to capitalize and gain critical points in the standings.
The Ferrari driver managed to gain the upper hand on both Verstappen and Norris during their second tussle at Turn 7, where Verstappen's dive down the inside sent both drivers off track.
Although Norris eventually overtook Leclerc before the end of the race, the Monegasque still finished ahead of Verstappen and gained points on the championship leader for the fourth time in the last five races.
“I welcome Max being as aggressive to Lando as possible because it helps me, at least it gives me chances to be closer to Lando in the drivers' championship because it's still a fight,” commented Leclerc.
“If anything, it's more a fight, Lando and myself than with Max, who has quite an advantage in points.”
Indeed, despite his setback last weekend at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Verstappen still enjoys a relatively comfortable 47-point lead over Norris with four races to go, with Leclerc 71 points adrift.
While happy to make inroads into his rivals' leads, Leclerc is keeping it real when it comes to his realistic achievements of winning the drivers' title.
“I think first the approach is not to start thinking about the drivers' championship,” he explained. “That doesn't help me achieve anything more. It's by focusing race-by-race.
“And more than that, I just feel like it's not in my control whether I win the drivers' championship. Or there's part of it that is in my control, and if I win all races, that puts most of the chances on my side.
“But even if I do that, I've got to have Max that has very poor weekends and I don't rely on that, so I'll just try and do the best possible end of the season, and then we'll do the maths at the end of the season.”
Reflecting on the race in Mexico City, Leclerc suggested that Norris' fight with Verstappen likely cost the McLaren driver a chance to take the fight to race winner Carlos Sainz.
“I had no chance to stay in front of Lando,” Leclerc explained.
“Lando was flying, and I think as a team, we've been pretty lucky that whatever happened with Max and Lando at the beginning of the race, that slowed him down massively. His second stint was very, very impressive.
©Ferrari
“So that was a good thing for us, and that probably helped us. On my side, there was no way that I could stay in front.”
In his near dramatic crash on lap 63 that allowed Norris to slip by, Leclerc admitted that he had gone over the limit on the exit of the final corner in a desperate bid to protect his runner-up spot from his rival McLaren.
“I knew that it would be very difficult,” he said. “I knew that I had to have an incredible exit out of the last corner, so I tried to put everything to have a really good exit, went over the limit, lost the car and lost the position.
“But I felt it was a question of gaps or corners before I lost that position.”
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