Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz left stranded after Baku resulting in viral road trip video

Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were forced into making a last-minute road trip from “the middle of Italy” back to Monaco in a rental van after their flight to Nice was cancelled.

After the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, where Sainz clinched his first podium with Williams, the former team-mates’ flight was diverted to Italy after storms in Nice meant they couldn’t land there. So, they rented a van and decided to turn it into a road trip with Leclerc’s friends Joris Trouche and Antoine Truchet, who are also the Ferrari driver’s photographer and videographer.

“So, after a difficult weekend in Baku, I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but…” Leclerc said as he panned the camera around to show a dark road heading into a tunnel. He then swung the camera around to Sainz, who was driving.

“We are driving a van!” the Spanish driver exclaimed. “In the middle of Italy,” he said when asked where they were. Why? “We were diverted for a storm, we couldn’t land in Nice, so we landed in the middle of Italy. We rented a van, and now we are on our way to Monaco.

“A two-hour drive, and we will make it in one hour and a half,” he joked.

While Sainz finished the race at the Baku City Circuit in third, his best finish yet with Williams, Leclerc had a more difficult race after a crash in qualifying put him on the back foot. The Monegasque driver crossed the line to take ninth position and two championship points.

“It’s the way it is but I’ve got to take responsibility for qualifying,” Leclerc explained to Sky Sports F1 after the race. “I didn’t go our way yesterday because I did a mistake in Q3 and yeah this weekend happens and it’s been a very strong season so far for me.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari

Photo by: Jayce Illman / Getty Images

“But to this weekend I haven’t been doing a great job and in qualifying I pay the price of the mistake in Q3 and in those conditions when it’s tricky that’s where I should be in front and taking that as an opportunity.

“I didn’t do that with that this weekend. Today we pay the price of that because I was basically stuck in traffic and it was a little bit of rolling the dice which strategy would be best. You would only hope that you were on the same strategy as the guys which were faster.

“I unfortunately was on the same strategy as maybe cars that were struggling a little bit more but Liam was doing a really good job defending, had a really good straightline speed and was just impossible to overtake even though we had more pace. So that means that it’s not been a great Sunday for us.”

Photos from Azerbaijan GP – Race

Azerbaijan GP – Sunday, in photos

Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz left stranded after Baku resulting in viral road trip video

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