‘You can’t…’ - Martin Brundle questions Charles Leclerc over tense Ferrari radio exchange in Barcelona GP

Martin Brundle questioned Charles Leclerc during the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix after he had a tense radio exchange with his Ferrari race engineer Bryan Bozzi.

Leclerc crashed out of qualifying during Q3 on Saturday when he lost control of his car coming out of turn four.

The Monegasque driver had a head-on collision with the tyre barrier but was fortunately able to walk away under his own steam.

READ MORE: Charles Leclerc involved in head-on crash during Q3 at Barcelona GP

But the crash meant he was guaranteed to start the Grand Prix on Sunday from 10th place, with team-mate Lewis Hamilton lining up on the front row.

Leclerc got off to a good start and was up to sixth place, ahead of McLaren's Oscar Piastri, ahead of his first pit stop.

He was one of the last drivers in the field to pit, meaning he was leading the Grand Prix before he came in for new tyres.

Ferrari asked Leclerc to box, but the driver told his race engineer Bozzi that he would rather extend the stint further, given the prospect of losing significant time to drivers who had attempted the undercut ahead of him.

'You've got to trust them' - Brundle on Leclerc radio exchange

Leclerc did eventually relent and came in a lap later - with Brundle, on co-commentary for Sky Sports, questioning his decision to attempt to go against what his engineers were asking.

"The team have got a lot of clever people on the pitwall, in the garage and back at base, looking at all the drivers on the track and all sorts of information," Brundle said.

"You've got to trust them. You can't start engineering and strategising a car from the cockpit. I think you can contribute, but in the end, you've got to trust your team."

Later in the race, Leclerc - on a different tyre strategy - was in front of a much faster Hamilton, who was on much fresher tyres.

Leclerc decided to let Hamilton through to continue his pursuit of race leader George Russell, who had led the race from pole position.

Ferrari attempted an alternate tyre strategy with Hamilton compared to Russell and his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli.

The seven-time world champion started on the soft tyres, with Mercedes on the mediums, and then did a hard tyre and a medium tyre stint.

Mercedes, meanwhile, started both drivers on the medium tyres, and they followed that up with two hard tyre stints.

Ahead of the Grand Prix, Red Bull's Max Verstappen had warned that the winner of the race could be whoever manages to look after their tyres the best around what is a high-degradation track at the Circuit de Catalunya.

"To be honest, all the tyres felt bad, so I guess everyone will struggle," he told reporters on Saturday.

"It just depends on who will struggle the most or not. So we'll see."