Laurent Mekies does not believe Charles Leclerc is more emotional than Carlos Sainz

Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies does not feel Charles Leclerc is a more emotional driver than his team-mate Carlos Sainz.

A mixture of mistakes by the individual drivers and team, plus poor reliability, has ensured that Ferrari are lagging seriously behind in a World Championship battle that they arguably could be leading against Red Bull.

Instead of being a team looking like they are about to end their F1 title drought, Charles Leclerc finds himself 80 points behind World Championship leader Max Verstappen and Ferrari are 97 points adrift of the Milton Keynes-based outfit.

In Leclerc’s case, his season highs in Bahrain, Australia and Austria have been accompanied by some deep lows, including a deafening scream of frustration when crashing out from the lead of the French Grand Prix.

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But, despite clear examples of Leclerc letting his emotions come through via team radio, Mekies is of the opinion that the Monegasque driver is not different to Sainz in that sense.

“I wouldn’t say Leclerc is a bit more emotional than Sainz,” Mekies said, as quoted by Italian publication Formula Passion.

“Both of these guys have had ups and downs, the latter very painful, this season, and in both cases, when they go back to the garage, once they analyse what happened through data as well, they are able to reset everything and put themselves in learning mode in a quarter of an hour.”

Mekies also believes that too much focus is placed on the radio messages chosen to be broadcast during live television coverage, because people do not realise just how quickly Ferrari drivers will transition from being frustrated to using the specific incident as motivation for future races.

“You have to distinguish what you hear on the radio during the race in the heat of the moment from the rest,” Mekies added.

“They are two different things. When they get out of the car and analyse everything, after an hour they no longer have negative emotions and are even more motivated.”