Ferrari have confirmed they will launch an investigation into Charles Leclerc’s disastrous outing at the Hungarian Grand Prix. It was a painful weekend for the Monegasque driver, who went from hero to zero in the space of 24 hours. He shocked everybody by qualifying on pole position, blowing the McLaren duo of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris out of the water.
Leclerc made a solid start to the race and it initially looked as though he would go on to claim victory. However, he suffered a dramatic collapse and ended up finishing fourth. He was left furious with his Ferrari colleagues, exploding at his team over the radio in a moment of madness before being overtaken by George Russell.
“This is so incredibly frustrating,” raged Leclerc. “We’ve lost all competitiveness. You just have to listen to me, I would have found a different way of managing those issues. Now it’s just undriveable. It’s a miracle if we finish on the podium.”
Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur has vowed to investigate what happened in the hope of avoiding a repeat after the summer break.
“The situation was quite strange,” he said. “We were in control for the first 40 laps of the race. We were very in control during the first stint, a bit more difficult during the second, but it was still manageable, and the last was a disaster.
“[The car was] very difficult to drive, the balance was not there. Honestly, we don’t know exactly what happened. It means we have to investigate to see if something broke on the chassis side or whatever.
“At one stage, I thought that he would never finish the race, so we can be lucky, in this situation, to score points from P4.
“But it’s really frustrating for us because we had the first pole position of the season and the first two stints went pretty well, but then we completely lost the pace and the path of the weekend with the last one.”
Leclerc was also hit with a five-second time penalty for driving erratically during his battle with Russell. He later retracted his furious radio comments but provided no detail of the chassis problem he was informed about after the chequered flag.
“I need to take back the words I said on the radio because I thought it was coming from one thing, and then I got a lot more details since I got out of the car,” said the Monegasque driver.
“It was actually an issue coming from the chassis and nothing we could have done differently. I started to feel the issue on lap 40 or something like that.
“It got worse, lap after lap after lap and towards the end we were two seconds off the pace. The car was just undriveable. I repeat myself, this was an issue and it’s an outlier. It shouldn’t ever happen again. I am still very disappointed.”
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