Charles Leclerc had yet another roller coaster weekend at the Hungarian Grand Prix as he went from leading the race to finishing P6.
Once again Ferraris’ strategy saw Charles Leclerc going home without a victory despite leading having a comfortable lead in the race.
Leclerc started the race from P3 and had the lead in the race for quite some time. But again a questionable strategy from Ferrari saw the Monegasque lose track positions and fall down to P6.
Meanwhile, his main rival Max Verstappen went on to bag yet another victory before the summer break.
As a bit of rain drizzled on the track, Ferrari opted to pit Leclerc for ineffective slower hard tyres. The Italian team chose this strategy despite Leclerc’s wishes to stay on mediums and also against the evidence of the Alpines struggling badly on them.
On the post-race team radio, Leclerc told his race engineer Xavier, “the hard tyre was so bad. That‘s why I said I wanted to stay on medium as long as possible. The hard was really bad.”
The Ferrari driver further asked, “Why did we go for it?” To which his race engineer told him that they will talk about it later.
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“Can’t win the title if we do races like that” – Charles Leclerc
The Ferrari drivers started their races from P2 and P3 while their main rivals started from P10 and P11. The team had expected to close the points gap in the championship battle but instead, now Verstappen has an 80-point lead over Leclerc.
Looking at the poor tyre performance and chances of victory slipping away at the Hungaroring, Leclerc went absolutely silent on the radio for almost 20 laps.
Speaking to the media after the race, a disappointed Leclerc said, “I don’t know what to say, my medium tyres were good. I had a good feeling about them, I don’t understand.”
“We can’t hope to win the championship if we do races like that,” he concluded.
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