Bahrain GP: Charles Leclerc reveals last lap joke that gave Ferrari engineers 'heart attack'

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has revealed that he joked he was having engine problems in the final stages of the Bahrain Grand Prix on the radio, giving his engineers quite the fright.

The Scuderia would appear to be back at the start of the new Formula 1 season, with Leclerc taking a lights-to-flag victory in Bahrain on Sunday, ahead of team-mate Carlos Sainz who came second after Red Bull driver Max Verstappen had to retire a handful of laps from the end.

Indeed, the Dutch driver was complaining of a loss of power just before he started crawling back to the pits, and his team-mate Sergio Perez suffered the same fate soon after, marking quite the disappointing weekend for the Bulls.

Triumph, though, it was for Ferrari as they won their first race since 2019 and it was certainly impressive how robust both their cars looked over the 57-lap race.

Indeed, such was the confidence that Leclerc had in his car’s reliability, he opted to make a joke over his engine failing in the closing stages, which surely went down like a lead balloon on the Ferrari pitwall:

“I did a bit of a joke on the radio on the last lap saying there was something strange with the engine which gave a heart attack to some of the engineers I am sure.

“But everything was fine. Very happy this time we brought it home.”

We’re far from comic geniuses ourselves, but we’d probably suggest Charles sticks to his day job of driving a Formula 1 car terrifically well, rather than switching to stand-up comedy.

Ferrari can undoubtedly smile about the whole weekend, though, with it going perfectly, and now the plan has to be to try and make it a double in Saudi Arabia this weekend as the F1 circus heads to the Jeddah Street Circuit.