Vasseur jokes he has enough children after declining Leclerc godfather role

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur declined the role of godfather to Charles Leclerc’s newborn daughter with a dry one-liner at Friday’s press conference, telling reporters: “I have four children at home and I don’t want to be the godfather of all the children of my drivers.”

Leclerc and his wife Alexandra announced the birth of their first child, Bianca, on Wednesday. The question arrived at the end of a press conference that had been dominated by more pressing matters — specifically the first-lap collision between Leclerc and teammate Lewis Hamilton at the Mexican Grand Prix the previous weekend.

Leclerc had attempted to pass Hamilton, who started from pole, at the race start. Both drivers ran wide, Leclerc took the lead, but he was subsequently handed a five-second penalty for the incident. Hamilton dropped to third behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

Vasseur acknowledged the inherent friction that comes with fielding two highly competitive drivers, but stopped well short of regretting the decision to pair them.

“We have two experienced guys, two competitive guys,” he said. “There are now four or five races in a row that we are at the front, scoring the highest number of points after Monza and Madrid. Then, for sure, you have a kind of escalation because you all want to win races. I think it’s probably the downside of the system, that we have two competitive guys starting each weekend next to each other.”

“But I think if we are P2 today, it’s also because we have two guys who are very, very close, and we have to manage it. But it’s a choice. It’s a choice in the line-up, and I have the positive and the negative, but I will deal with the negative.”

Ferrari currently sits second in the constructors’ standings with 504 points, 126 adrift of championship leaders Mercedes.