Charles Leclerc believes he was brought to win the Hungarian Grand Prix, but he has restricted his criticism of Ferrari and blamed the chassis problems for sacrificing performance later in the race.
Leading from pole position in the first two stints of the race, Leclerc began complaining to Ferrari on team radio, saying, “You can feel what you discussed before the race. You need to discuss it before you do those.”
The subsequent message said, “We’re going to lose this race with these things. We’re losing so much time,” and Leclerc criticized the team very much when he slipped behind both McLaren drivers.
“It’s very frustrating. We’ve lost all our competitiveness,” he continued. “You have to listen to me. I’ve found another way to manage those issues. Now it’s just unwilling. It’s ambitious. It’s miraculous to finish on the podium.”
Leclerc’s words were accurate as George Russell overtook him and cleared the 15th in third place, but Monegasque says he was informed of a different cause of his lack of pace after the race.
“We need to get back what we said on the radio because we thought it came from one thing, but we got more details because we got out of the car. It was actually a problem that comes from the chassis and we couldn’t have done it differently,” Leclerc said.
“I started to feel 40 laps or something like that, and then it got worse and then I lap after lap. The pace was two seconds apart towards the end. The car wasn’t free.
“I’m still very disappointed. I had one opportunity to win a race this year. I think this was this weekend. The first stint was perfect. The first lap of the second stint was really good too. I think we were paced to win that race. The last stint was a disaster when we started having issues with the chassis.”
Leclerc says Ferrari is the uncertainty of the cause based on data seen during the race itself, but he knew that victory was running away from him at the start of the final stint.
“I think it was very tricky,” he said. “If not, we probably knew and they would have told me. It seems that it wasn’t that obvious in the data, but now we can definitely confirm that there is a problem.
“When I started to feel the problem, I really didn’t know where it came from. I thought it was too aggressive from the changes I made on the front wing at the pit stop. Of course, it got a lot worse. I felt a little sick.
