Charles Leclerc said he pleaded with Ferrari to stay off medium-compound tires leading into Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix before a pitfall on hard tires destroyed his hopes of victory, claiming “Something always goes wrong.”
The 24-year-old Monegasque driver, who was sixth to extend Max Verstappen’s championship lead to 80 points, said he was surprised by the decision and had to race.
With just nine races to go after the scheduled summer break, it may have also cost him any hope of a drivers’ title.
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Explaining why Ferrari made the decision, he said: “I don’t know yet. I need to talk to the team and understand the thinking behind the difficulty because I felt very strong on the medium.
“Everything was under control and then, for some reason, I don’t know why we needed to go through the rigors.
“I said on the radio that I’m very comfortable with the medium and I want to go as long as possible with these tires because the feeling was good, but I don’t know why we made a different decision.”
Leclerc had worked his way to lead the race by the midway point, passing Mercedes pole-setter George Russell, and was five seconds ahead when Ferrari pitted Verstappen on lap 39 following Red Bull’s decision. reacted.
After running on two sets of mediums, Leclerc needed a compound change and would have preferred a set of softs later in the race for a fast finish.
He said the timing of his second stop was critical, saying he felt Ferrari had reacted to Red Bull rather than sticking to its strategy.
“I think my second term should have been longer,” he explained.
“The first stage was the right moment to stop and we made the right choice there, but there on the second stage, I don’t know exactly why we cut it short and went hard.
“I’m pretty sure it was a call to put us under pressure, but I don’t think we should have reacted because then it was a snowball effect for us and we lost a lot from that. Which we should have.”
Leclerc has had a string of misfortunes this year, with engine problems, lack of confidence, poor strategy and his own mistakes handing champion Verstappen an easy defense of his title.
“A run like this is disappointing and we need to improve overall,” he added, keeping his spirits up.
“It feels like there’s always something going wrong — reliability, errors, whatever.
“We need to get better at putting the weekend together. Now, we’ll try to use the few days we have to reset, but also try to analyze and understand where we’re at. Need to get better and what we can do to get better because it’s extremely important.
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