Charles Leclerc reveals Ferrari never had conversations about using a tow from penalty-bound Lewis Hamilton

Charles Leclerc has revealed that any talks about a possible tow from Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton for the pole position battle were never discussed. The Monegasque driver has been the flag bearer for the Italian team this season in terms of performance.

During the F1 Italian GP qualifying, the driver was within a shot to secure pole position. His first push lap was less than a tenth off the benchmark time and put him on a provisional front row. However, things changed on the second lap. The driver came out on track with only Yuki Tsunoda ahead of him, which meant that the tow was not as effective.

Earlier in the weekend there had been suggestions that with Lewis Hamilton already serving a 5-place grid penalty, he could potentially provide Charles Leclerc a tow on his qualifying lap to help secure pole position. When that didn't happen, it did come as a surprise, as the Ferrari drivers would drop down the order to P4 and P5.

Talking to media, including Motorsport, Charles Leclerc revealed that he was happy with his laps, as he said,

"I'm happy in a way that I think we've maximised the package that we had today and I think I did a really good first lap in Q3. Unfortunately, in the second run of Q3 I was a little bit in the front with nobody, or just Yuki [Tsunoda], in front but that makes a big difference here."

He added,

"So there wasn't much more we could have done, but I think we did a good job maximising the result now, and now we'll look at tomorrow. I think McLaren and Red Bull are too far ahead for now."

When questioned about the tow, the driver revealed that it had not been discussed by the team. He said,

"Yeah, it's something we'll discuss with the team now, but obviously we need to... It's always tricky to get it perfectly right, and Lewis is still fighting to be starting as further up as possible, so yeah, we'll discuss about it, but I don't think it's the main point of today."

Lewis Hamilton not in favour of giving Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc a tow

Lewis Hamilton had also completed his post-qualifying scrum, in which he revealed that he was not in favor of giving Charles Leclerc a tow. The driver revealed that he already had a 5-place grid penalty, which meant that he had to focus on qualifying as high as possible. He said,

"Do I feel that they should have? No, it's not something I ever did in any of my other teams, and I'm sacrificing one of the drivers, and I've already got a five-place penalty, so points-wise I needed to be as high as I could,"

Charles Leclerc will start the race in P4 for Ferrari, while Lewis Hamilton will start the race in P10. With overtaking not the easiest around this track, it's going to be a tough ask to see either of the Ferrari drivers challenge for a win on Sunday.