Leclerc’s untelevised furious Ferrari rant after qualifying disappointment in Austin

Charles Leclerc launched into a sweary rant after Ferrari missed out on the front row grid position in qualifying for the United States Grand Prix.

Although Ferrari claimed the practice hat-trick at the Circuit of the Americas, when it came to qualifying, Leclerc nor Lewis Hamilton lost out to Kimi Antonelli and the Red Bull teammates.

Charles Leclerc explains Ferrari’s tyre struggles after US GP qualifying

Heading into the penultimate triple-header of the F1 2026 championship, Ferrari brought several new parts to the circuit.

The package focuses exclusively on aerodynamic refinements, featuring a revised sidepod profile, a reworked floor edge board, a modified diffuser, and underbody floor revisions.

Ferrari came out of the blocks firing, with Leclerc topping the timesheets in Friday’s two practices before Hamilton wrapped up the practice hat-trick with a P1 on Saturday.

The Scuderia went into qualifying chasing a front row grid slot, potentially even its first Grand Prix pole position of the championship.

Ferrari came up short.

While championship leader Antonelli claimed pole position with a 1:34.035, 0.179s ahead of Verstappen, Leclerc had to settle for fourth place with Hamilton in P5.

Leclerc let rip in an untelevised rant to Ferrari.

“Too much! F***! Too much front wing,” he ranted according to scuderiafans.

“The tyres, for f*** sake, such a tiny window.

“It’s s***! It’s absolutely awful. Awful.

“It’s unbelievable. Crazy.

“I don’t even want to know [the gaps].

“The last sector was horrible, with rear locking, rear limited.”

More from the United States Grand Prix

Winners and losers from the 2026 United States Grand Prix Qualifying

Kimi Antonelli has pole, but Max Verstappen has three key advantages for Austin

Speaking with the media in the bull pen after qualifying, Leclerc was asked if he was okay.

He replied with a rueful smile: “Well, not amazing.”

The Monegasque driver, who has managed one race win this season with his victory at the British Grand Prix, explained that Ferrari was struggling to find the sweet spot with the Pirelli tyres.

If the track temperature changes even just a few degrees, it creates a “huge” difference in the handling of the SF-26.

“It’s very disappointing because I think there are some weekends where we’ve been strong in free practices, but then coming quali, it’s very clear that the others are just having a lot more in the straights, and it’s very difficult for us to match that,” Leclerc said.

“But I felt like today, it’s a qualifying where we had the potential in the car. But the car also includes tyres. And in Q3, unfortunately, we were not in the right place.

“It was like one or two degrees less in Q3, and for me, it was a huge difference. I was sliding quite a lot already on the out-lap, and that made it very difficult.

“It is quite frustrating. But yeah, there are reasons for it, and so at the same time, I think we just need to work harder and try and understand very well those tyres even better than what we are doing now,.

“The others I think normally have a bit more – it’s a bit easier for them to extract the lap time in Q3 than it is for us. And as soon as we are a tiny bit outside the window, we pay a lot the price. So this is something that we need to look into.”

That Leclerc missed out on a front-row grid slot by just 0.05 seconds to Verstappen only added to his frustration.

“Yeah, and even more when I look at my Q2 lap, which was 0.1, which I think was only maybe a tenth behind Kimi, so I was expecting to do another step in Q3, which unfortunately never came.”

Read next: Lewis Hamilton jokes Kimi Antonelli should ‘slow down’ as F1 title looms