F1 insider makes explosive claim after Lewis Hamilton-Charles Leclerc clash: 'Always been a dirty driver'

A long-time F1 insider and former team manager has hit out at Charles Leclerc, calling him a 'dirty driver' after a series of incidents in recent weeks.

Peter Windsor was weighing in on the recent brouhaha between the Monegasque and his Ferrari team-mate Lewis Hamilton, saying that the Brit must have missed the memo on how Leclerc has driven throughout his career.

Hamilton said ahead of the race in Sao Paulo on Sunday that he believes that his team-mate races him harder than anyone else on the grid, but Windsor laughed off that suggestion, pointing out that Leclerc appeared to deliberately make contact with Liam Lawson to make a pass just a couple of days later.

Windsor insisted that Leclerc 'has always been a dirty driver, always will be', and warned that Hamilton had made a fundamental mistake in not realising and addressing that sooner.

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Leclerc 'has always been a dirty driver'

Speaking on Cameron Cc's YouTube channel after the race, Windsor said: “[Lewis] is quite clearly wrong about [Leclerc] racing Lewis harder than anybody else because he didn't actually drive into Lewis in Mexico. Look what he did to Liam Lawson in Brazil, just to name one example of a Charles incident.

“Charles has always been a dirty driver, always will be, and everybody knows that except apparently Lewis Hamilton when he’s about to sign a new contract at Ferrari. He presumably thought, ‘Oh well, Charles will drive as I do, never do anything unsporting'.

He continued: “There's that and then there’s the other things Lewis is saying, and believe me, I'm a Lewis fan, but the other things he's saying are what he should have been saying the day he signed his contract to Ferrari."

Windsor: Ludicrous for Hamilton to complain now

Windsor then launched into his interpretation of what Hamilton should've said on his first day with the team, saying: “‘Yeah, I've joined Ferrari. I'm so delighted.

"'I'm wearing the Marlon Brando kit, and I've got the F40, and I've made it very clear to Ferrari that I will not be silenced and that if we're on track together, I know how vicious Charles can be, but he isn’t going to be within a metre of my car.

"'We’re going to race, but I don't ever want to have him one metre around my car and I've told them that, and that's the condition on which I've signed the contract. Let's go racing. I love Charles. He's a brilliant guy, but I had to put that in the contract because of everything he's done in the past'.

“If you'd said that then, that would have made a lot of sense to me, but there's no point saying it [now]. What's the point now? That's completely ludicrous. We knew what Charles was like, and Lewis should have known.”

There could yet be further drama in the future, too. After what went down in Mexico, Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur held talks with his drivers behind the scenes, he confirmed in Brazil that it was business as usual when it came to their rules of engagement.

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