Leclerc: Vettel's start wasn't better than mine

Charles Leclerc has claimed that his and Sebastian Vettel's starts of the Russian Grand Prix were identical, with Vettel gaining the lead via the slipstream to trigger pre-arranged team orders.

Leclerc had admitted that P1 may not be the best starting position after securing his fourth straight pole position and it played out that way as Vettel blasted past Lewis Hamilton and the Monegasque to lead by Turn 2.

Things began to unravel from there as Vettel was asked to let Leclerc back through. The German refused, only to see Leclerc given a favourable pit-stop strategy and then suffering an engine failure, which ended his race as well as helping Hamilton to stay ahead of Leclerc and go on to win.

Vettel said over team radio that he would have taken P1 from Leclerc regardless of the tow, but Leclerc says he was given different information.

"For sure he did a great start but it was said over the radio the start performance was exactly the same," Leclerc told Sky Sports.

"But after that I just stayed on the left to give him the slipstream, but no big deals and I think everybody respected their own things."

He added: "I think everything has been respected in a way because I gave the slipstream then had to do the swap back, which we did at the pitstop, and that's it."

Leclerc ceded position to Bottas in order to run on the same strategy, but could not get past the Finn and dismissed the notion that he could have caught Hamilton in any regard.

He said: "They were very quick and they've been very quick since the start of the year in the race pace and we need to understand why there's so much difference between the quali and the race pace.

"But whether it will have been enough to challenge, I don't know, because I could not overtake Valtteri and Lewis was quicker than Valtteri."

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