Charles Leclerc believes that he was on track to win the Hungarian Grand Prix, but the blame gives a chassis problem for the late race to cost him the performance, which limits his criticism of Ferrari.
During the first two stints of the pole position race, Leclerc started complaining at Ferrari on Team Radio and said: “I can feel what we discussed before the race. We have to discuss those things before we do them.”
A later message said: “We are going to lose this race with these things. We lose so much time”, before Leclerc then heavily criticized the team as he slid behind both McLaren drivers.
“This is so incredibly frustrating, we have lost all the competitiveness,” he continued. “You just have to listen to me; I would have found another way to manage those problems. Now it is just inexorable. Unktied. It’s a miracle when we’re done on stage.”
The words of Leclerc were accurate when George Russell took him in and clearly pulled in third place, but the Monegasque says he was aware of another cause of his lack of pace after the race.
“I have to take back the words I said on the radio because I thought it came from one thing, but then I got a lot more details because I got out of the car, and it was actually a problem that came out of the chassis and nothing we could have done differently,” said Leclerc.
“The problem started to feel on round 40 or something, and then it got worse, shot after the round after the round, and by the end we were 2s of the pace. The car was just unatisfactory, but again, I repeat myself, this was a problem and it is a Babel. It should never happen again.
“I am still very disappointed. We had one chance this year to win a race, which I think this weekend was. The first rounds of the second Stint were also really good. I think we were on pace to try to win that race. The last Stint was a disaster when I started a problem with the chassis.”
Leclerc says that Ferrari was uncertain about the cause based on the data it saw during the race itself, but he knew that the victory came away from him at the start of his last Stint.
“I find it quite difficult,” he said. “Otherwise we would probably have known it and they would have told me. Apparently it was not so clear on data, but now we can certainly confirm that there was a problem.
“When I started to feel the problems, I didn’t really know where it came from. I thought it was a change that we made on the front wing at the pit stop, being too aggressive. Then of course it became much worse. It looked a bit like me. When I first felt the very strange behavior of the car,” I thought: “We will go away from us.”
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