Charles Leclerc has admitted that he had no say in the decision to change his race engineer ahead of this weekend's Grand Prix.

In a brief statement last week the Maranello outfit announced that performance engineer Bryan Bozzi would be replacing Leclerc's long-standing race engineer Xavi Marcos who is heading off for a new, unspecified role within the team.

Changing engineers mid-season is a risky move, and, in the case of Ferrari, one has to go back to 2006 when Rob Smedley was appointed engineer to Felipe Massa.

Asked about the decision, Leclerc admitted that he had no say.

"Obviously it's very, very tight in the front and everything makes a difference," he told members of the media. "However, the decision was made between the team and Xavi.

"They had other plans in mind, I guess, and it was communicated to me right after Miami," he added. "But having said that, Bryan, who will take the role of Xavi from now onwards, is a person I have been working with since I arrived in Ferrari. He's always been my performance engineer, so he knows exactly how everything works. So, it's not like I'm starting from zero and it's going to be a complete re-adaptation.

"It's been super smooth until now," he continued, "and I'm sure it will continue that way and we'll be at our 100% already from this weekend. That's all I can say."

"Bryan was there before me," said team boss, Fred Vasseur. "He was with Charles for a long time, and they have a very, very good technical collaboration. They rate each other very highly.

"It was, I think, the normal step for Bryan also, and you know that we are in a kind of continuous improvement. We were thinking that Bryan was a step forward for us and, at the end of the day, we are fighting for thousandths of a second.

"If you have the feeling that you have something a bit better somewhere, it's always good to go for it and not to say, let's stay like we are. I'm really convinced that Bryan is very good. He has experience of the car, and the experience of the crew. He knows everybody in the team and the adaptation will be very easy."

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