Charles Leclerc said he “spoke too quickly” and wanted to take back his frustrated radio messages suggesting Ferrari had cost him victory and a podium at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Leclerc started from pole position but finished a disappointing fourth having faded from contention in the final stint of the race.
The Ferrari driver, who has only won five of the 27 races he has started from pole position, seemed to be complaining to something about Ferrari’s execution of the race that had come up in pre-race strategy briefings.
“I can feel what we discussed before the race… we need to discuss those things before doing them,” he said on the radio at one stage.
He later added: “We are going to lose this race with these things. We are losing so much time.”
Leclerc’s mood only got worse after he made his second pit-stop.
“This is so incredibly frustrating,” he said. “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 undriveble. Undriveable. It’s a miracle if we finish on the podium.”
Leclerc’s prediction was accurate. He was soon passed by McLaren’s Oscar PIastri for second and then Mercedes’ George Russell, for the final spot on the podium.
Speaking to the media immediately after the contest, Leclerc rowed back his comments and suggested the car had an issue that led to his rapid drop in pace.
“First of all, I need to take back the words I’ve said in the radio because I thought that it was coming from one thing, but then I got a lot more detail since I got out of the car,” Leclerc said.
“It was actually an issue coming from the chassis and nothing that we could have done differently. I started to feel the issue in Lap 40 or something like that, and then it got worse, laps after laps after laps, and towards the end we were two seconds off the pace. And the car was just undriveable.”
Referring to the messages on Sky Sports F1, he added: “I spoke too quickly, I guess.”
He was unable to elaborate on what the issues was, just that Ferrari had found it once the race finished.
“I don’t know yet how it was caused, but we’ll look into it … I think it was quite tricky. Otherwise, I probably would have known and they would have told me. But yeah, apparently it wasn’t as obvious on data. However, now you can definitely confirm that there was a problem.”
Leclerc had snatched a shock pole from the McLarens on Saturday and said his race issue was doubly frustrating given how Ferrari has not been competitive this season.
“This was an issue and it’s an outlier. It shouldn’t ever happen again. I mean, I’m still very disappointed. We had one opportunity this year to win a race, which I think was this weekend. The first stint was perfect. The first laps of the second stint was really good as well.
“I think we were on pace to try and win that race. The last stint was a disaster when I started to have an issue in the chassis.”
