"There have been moments I went too far," admits Charles Leclerc when asked about battles with teammate Lewis Hamilton.

Although it was Monza that made the headlines, the pair have 'tangled' on a number of occasions this season, going right back to Shanghai.

In the aftermath of Monza the Monegasque claimed "we went too far", leading Hamilton to question who this "we" was that he was referring to. Leclerc subsequently took the blame.

Three weeks later, he admitted that some of the encounters with the seven-time world champion have crossed the line.

"There have been moments where I went too far, where Lewis went too far," he said, "but I think the key in that is to discuss.

"I mean, I've been with Ferrari since 2019," he continued, "and I know everything we do is overanalysed, over-discussed, and very often the conclusions that are taken after those kinds of fights are the wrong ones.

"We only need to speak with Lewis to kind of understand," he added. "We've been doing that all our life, so we both want to win and there's competition, but we also want to win as a team and to make Ferrari come out on top eventually. So that is the priority.

"I enjoy fighting with Lewis," he grinned, "that's what is exciting in Formula 1, to be fighting against the best, and Lewis is definitely up there. So, for me it's a big challenge, but I'm enjoying it."

Asked if Ferrari has made the rules of engagement clear, he said: "Sure. I mean, Turn 2 in Monza is something that I've said repeatedly, that it's not something that we want to see ever happen again, and that's going too far on my side. But I've been through it already.

"I think it's pretty clear that we don't necessarily have to write those things," he continued. "I think it's clear enough. Again, I feel like it's being over-discussed and overanalysed when it's about the red cars. That's not really fair.

"In Monza, if you look at the four top teams, three of them had fights like this, with the car finishing in the grass, and at the end of the day the only thing we are speaking about still now is the red cars, which I don't think is fair."

The Monegasque was then asked for his opinion of Kimi Antonelli, and whether the youngster is doing a better job with the new regulations.

"I wish I knew," he smiled, "but clearly, he's doing something that works very well.

"But to be honest, it's not that it comes as a complete surprise," he added. "If I look at Kimi going through the junior ranks, I think it was quite clear for everybody that he had something very special.

"If you look, obviously, at the first year in Formula 1, I think he probably faced challenges. I mean, it's not up to me to go into detail, I don't know, but surely he had some struggles in the first year.

"But this year has been extremely impressive. I mean, from the first race to now, he's been perfect and driving at a very high level against a driver that I rate extremely highly as well, which is George.

"So, he's doing an incredible job.

"To give you exactly why he's so fast and why he is outstandingly fast this year compared to last year is very difficult for me," he admitted. "I mean, we are all here analysing the data of everybody, but we can only go up to a certain amount of detail. Then you really need the data of the actual car to dig into more detail. So, it's difficult. But his laps look a lot on the limit, but somehow he manages to do the lap when it counts. And that's been very impressive to watch."