VOICE OF THE PADDOCK: Forget his charming exterior, Charles Leclerc is a sneaky little b*****d. Lewis Hamilton was right to accuse him of dirty tricks in Mexico – and their furious post-race debrief proves Ferrari may be headed for civil war

You couldn’t meet a nicer guy, the charming, multi-lingual, piano-playing, every-teenage-girl’s crush called Charles Leclerc.

He has his beautiful wife Alexandra, to whose side he has dotingly returned to Monaco as she is about to give birth to their first child, almost exactly nine months after their picture-perfect wedding in the principality of his birth.

They pamper an adorable dog that Alexandra walks around the paddock, a miniature long-haired dachshund named Leo that wins immediate affection. Little Leo has his own VIP pass.

The sophisticated Charles also happens to be a sneaky little bastard.

That contention, I believe, was at the heart of Lewis Hamilton’s complaint about the bubbling internecine dispute at Ferrari he laid bare on the first lap of last Sunday’s Mexico City Grand Prix.

The brief facts. Hamilton started on pole. Leclerc, third on the grid, was making a good start in his team-mate’s slipstream. The pair of red cars went wheel-to-wheel and, at Turn 4, Leclerc ran off the track over the grass and came out in front. He gained ‘an unfair advantage’ but did not cede the place back. This situation was complicated, admittedly, by the fact that their on-track squabble let Max Verstappen into second spot, the Dutchman then acting as a sandwich between the Ferraris.

Leclerc knew this complication was the case and exploited the fact – there was no way he and Hamilton could swap places while Verstappen was separating them. Leclerc sprinted out in the lead, establishing an ever-increasing momentum in clean air.

He was later handed a five-second penalty for his ill-gotten gains, but by then was away. Hamilton was furious. He rightly thought that other than for his being hijacked, Ferrari could, in all likelihood, have come home first and second. In the end, they finished second and fourth, Hamilton ending up ahead of Leclerc, having passed the Monegasque ‘saint’ at a later restart. Verstappen, so acute to the situation and ready to capitalise on the opening he was given, won the race.

On the radio, Hamilton complained of ‘big, big problems’ with Leclerc. He called for ‘talks behind closed doors’ and claimed that his comrade had broken the spirit of their pre-race arrangement.

Hamilton was hardly unbiased, mind. It was his win he concerned about, probably principally. But he is also a fair man and as a seven-time world champion due some significant degree of respect, at least worthy of a level-playing field.

Hamilton is not and never has been someone to take an edge by subterfuge or sleight of hand. That is not his style. He felt Leclerc had played dirty; to reiterate my phrase, to be ‘sneaky’. Leclerc argued, meanwhile, that he had every right to fight for the victory.

Several layers feed into the debate. The oldest conflict in F1 is between the driver’s desire to win set against the better interests of the team. It is a conundrum that can never be entirely solved.

I understand there was a very tense post-race debrief in Mexico. Team principal Fred Vasseur has this Hamilton-Leclerc dilemma to weigh up and he is conducting talks about how to put the conflict to bed and draw up rules of combat that work for the best of the team.

This is a thorny subject. Leclerc thinks he can do what he wants, protected by factions within Ferrari he has been sponsored by since a young age, as a product of the Scuderia’s academy. Hamilton is railing against this skewed love-in.

Teams gravitate in certain directions, and Hamilton is trying to assert himself into the equation in an alien, anti-English environment which Leclerc believes, however subconsciously, is his domain.

Ferrari should call on Christian

Christian Horner’s book Drive is in the Sunday Times best-seller list, at No 3. Regardless of the former Red Bull boss’s half-ghost-written literary prowess, should he not be Ferrari team principal?

If they had ambition, which they do, but imagination, which they do not, why would he not be brought in right now?

My remedy for the F1 grind 

I have gleaned more stories for Daily Mail Sport in British Airways lounges than anywhere else. People feel free to talk, and a few drinks have been consumed, and everyone’s relaxed returning from a race.

You never get it on the way out to wherever we are going, people keeping themselves to themselves.

But the mood leaving Mexico City this past weekend was one of tiredness. I have never seen a more discombobulated collection of us. One team principal, whose identity shall remain anonymous, fell asleep sitting opposite me.

Everyone was shot. This is a gruelling season with its back-to-back races pulling you into this time zone and that. The addition of the ‘Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia’ last month, somewhat hastily arranged, added an extra burden of travel. In the last six weeks: Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Singapore, Texas, Mexico, and that is a brutal itinerary. Brazil comes on Sunday.

On which note, I advised a colleague doing her first race in Sau Paulo – arguably the best circuit in the world – to alleviate the exigencies of the calendar to sample the country’s national drink, Caipirinha cocktails.

I suggested, based on hard experience: one Caipirinha good, two decent, three oblivion.

Did Mercedes’ Max pursuit hurt Russell? 

For all George Russell – vanquished in Mexico by the brilliance of his team-mate Kimi Antonelli, the youngest world champion at 20 with four races to spare – says he is backed by his boss Toto Wolff, but how hardly does he feel that Mercedes courted Max Verstappen these past two years?

Confidence is a big factor in sport, and what impact, one wonders, did these prolonged and public overtures to a rival prey on his mind and pollute his performance?