Charles Leclerc has revealed that he was on painkillers for the United States Grand Prix... and not to deal with Ferrari's strategic disaster.

In fact, the Monegasque was suffering from a tooth infection and had been in pain since the start of the COTA weekend.

"I had a tooth infection inside," he revealed. "I think it's the wisdom tooth.

"I was in quite a lot in pain on Thursday, Friday, and then it calmed down," he added. "Today it was OK.

"I've been on really big painkillers since Thursday," he admitted. "For some reason now it's actually quite fine, as I took painkillers before the race.

"I've had times that were quite intense and others that was less, but nothing that affected me inside the car."

Tooth infection or no tooth infection, the youngster surely needed further assistance in stopping the pain as Ferrari once again went the wrong way on strategy.

A day after Carlos Sainz paid the price for being the only driver to use softs during the Sprint, Ferrari opted to put Leclerc on a one-stop strategy which left him at the mercy of those on a two-stopper.

The last driver to make a scheduled (first) stop, Leclerc inherited the lead on Lap 20 when Lewis Hamilton pitted. Stopping three laps later he rejoined the race in sixth behind Sergio Perez.

When the second round of stops got underway he rose to third, but unable to keep pace with Max Verstappen and Lando Norris he soon fell prey to Hamilton before being told to yield to his Ferrari teammate, Carlos Sainz.

Unaware that the Spaniard was on a different strategy, Leclerc took issue with the call to let his teammate through.

At race end he finished sixth, but there was more misery to come when he, and Hamilton, were disqualified.

Speaking at race end, Leclerc claimed his team had got its number wrong.

"From the beginning of the race when we thought the one-stop and the two-stops were extremely close together," he said. "After 12... 13 laps, I saw the numbers on the dash. They were pretty good for the one-stop, at least in terms of degradation. I wasn't losing that much time laps after laps, and considering our numbers, this was the right thing to do.

"So, I went for the one stop and unfortunately this was definitely the wrong thing to do," he admitted. "For some reason, there was something wrong in our numbers today, because we were far off the ideal race strategy.

"To be honest, I don't have the answer yet because it was quite far off the two-stops," he continued. "We finished behind Carlos by ten seconds, which is a good comparison, because we've got both the same car.

"But there was something off," he added.

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