LE CASTELLET, France – Charles Leclerc’s voice can be heard devastation as he screams over the team radio. His car is nose into the barrier in Round 11, his championship chances were slimmed.
What makes it so upsetting is that this moment is on him. On a weekend when his Ferrari looked like a match against Red Bull and was looking for a win, he made an irresistible error.
“It was just a mistake,” he said. “I tried to go too many laps and probably left the wheel somewhere dirty. It was my fault and if I keep making mistakes like this then I deserve not to win the championship.
“This year the level is very high, I have performed at a high level, but if I continue to make these mistakes then it is meaningless to be at a high level.”
It’s hard to argue with Leclerc’s assessment. The blunder means Leclerc is now 63 points ahead of Max Verstappen in the championship with ten races remaining.
Had he not made a mistake and continued to win the race, he could have closed the gap with the defending champion to 31 points and successfully stripped Verstappen of his third straight race victory. The accident looked like a pivotal moment in Leclerc’s campaign.
Would Leclerc win without making mistakes?
The opening round of the French Grand Prix was tense as Verstappen’s Red Bull trailed Leclerc’s Ferrari. At first, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before Verstappen took advantage of Red Bull’s superior straight-line speed and overcame Leclerc with the help of the car’s Traction Reduction System (DRS), but the Ferrari driver was quickly in the right place to hold the reigning world champion.
The battle is made more interesting by the match-fixing decisions of the two teams last weekend. Ferrari opted for a high downforce setting, resulting in high cornering speeds but lacking in straight lines, while Red Bull prioritized straight line speed over cornering performance with its low drag setting.
In theory, Verstappen could overtake Ferrari on the Mistral Straight, but Leclerc’s speed through the previous Turns 5 and 6 meant Red Bull was never close enough to get the job done. After several failed attempts, Red Bull managed to take the lead at the stops and called in Verstappen for a new tire in the round of 16 – much earlier than anyone expected for the one-stop strategy.
Given the speed of the cars ahead, it looks like Verstappen is implementing a two-stop strategy, but the team insists they’re just looking at a one-stop. The plan was for Verstappen to use the speed advantage from his new tires after the pit stop to create enough time on Leclerc to take the lead when Leclerc made a pit stop himself a few laps later.
If the plan worked, it would give Verstappen the race lead but at the expense of a tire disadvantage as Leclerc could have emerged from the holes in the tires a few laps fresher than Red Bull – a boon. So he will probably take advantage of the race ending and try to exploit with a pass on the way to win.
Red Bull coach Christian Horner admits it’s a positive strategy but is optimistic Verstappen will be able to hold on to the win.
Horner said after the race: “It was exciting because Max was able to stay close to Charles for a long time for the first time without the tires heating up. “We were – as we saw the rest of the weekend – very fast in the field two [on the straights]similar to Ferrari in zone one and a bit slower in zone three – mostly Turning 11.
“The race went well and we were in his DRS, but we couldn’t come close enough in Round 6 before the straight to really take advantage of the DRS. So that’s why we’re here. I got my spot on the track and I think we’ll be able to defend reasonably comfortably with the pace we have in zone two.
“It was very close between the two teams even though we have very different approaches to achieving lap times.”
If anything, once Verstappen was pitted, Leclerc could have easily brought down Red Bull. According to engineers at rival teams, the optimal lap to enter a stop would be around lap 22 or 23, so pitting as early as Red Bull runs the risk of running out of tires by the end of the Race.
For Leclerc, it was more about playing a long game and finding the tire advantage for the end of the race than trying to keep Verstappen around after the pit stop. That’s why it was so surprising when he turned in lap 18.
Once Leclerc is out of contention, Verstappen can rest easy knowing that Lewis Hamilton’s much slower Mercedes will never really be a threat to victory. As a result, we’ll never know how much his tires will suffer at the end of the race if he gets really pressurized by Leclerc.
Horner added: “It’s a pity it didn’t happen because the second half of the race will be the opposite of the first. “We already have the track position but Charles will have the tire advantage.”
Ferrari coach Mattia Binotto felt Leclerc had a better tactical grip before the shoot.
“Charles has won the pole, he is leading the race and I think we have an advantage over Red Bull in terms of tire degradation in lap 15, because Max had to stop,” Binotto said. “We could have stretched the time and we’re stretching the time, look at the point where Max stops when he starts to get a flat tire, Charles is going two or three tenths per lap above him, once again proving that our cars are sublimely sublime with tire management.”
Unfortunately, we will never know who is right.
Is Leclerc too buggy to be world champion?
What will hurt Leclerc the most is to learn that his Ferrari is capable of challenging for this year’s title. It is very difficult to get championship cars in F1 and the majority of drivers will go their whole careers without ever winning a title. Such opportunities need to be capitalized on, but Leclerc could feel the opportunity slipping through his fingers after just 12 of 22 races.
After Sunday’s result, even the best possible points in Hungary next weekend (with him winning and Verstappen failing to score) will only put him back on the ball from long range against France. – with only two races less to close the gap. Most likely, Ferrari and Leclerc will enter F1’s summer break with a gap of more than 50 points and wonder where things went wrong.
If they were honest with themselves, they would have discovered a long list of errors that had grown steadily over the past nine races. Since the Australian Grand Prix in March, which Leclerc won to extend his championship lead to 36 points, he has conceded 107 points to Verstappen – averaging almost 12 points per race.
Winning around 72 points in Verstappen’s favor could be attributed to a combination of reliability issues, strategic errors and net penalties for Leclerc at the Spanish, Monaco, Azerbaijani, Canadian and British Grands Prix , but the exact number of 32 can be traced from Leclerc himself.
Leclerc’s first mistake came to Imola in April when he tumbled out of a solid third place trying to catch two Red Bulls ahead and dropped to fifth on the finish, costing him seven points. The second came on Sunday when he threw a clear shot into the win, costing him a full 25.
“If we lose the championship by 32 points at the end of the season, I’ll know where they’re coming from,” Leclerc said. “And it’s unacceptable, I’m just reaching on top of that stuff.”
While the outcome of a title race in F1 can often be tracked from a long list of whats-ifs and maybes, it is rare for a driver to throw away so many points in the first half of the season. still won the championship in the final race. . Especially when the opposition is as good as Verstappen.
Unlike Leclerc, Verstappen has yet to issue an obvious driver error. He’s lost the championship to reliability issues in Bahrain and Australia and is likely to win a car breakdown in the UK, but he’s yet to commit an unwarranted fault of his own. Arguably, that is the disparity between the two 24-year-olds and also why it is unthinkable for Leclerc to turn a 63-point deficit from this point on.
But Ferrari is siding with its driver. On Sunday, Binotto said mistakes like Leclerc’s come with maximum performance-boosting territory. Then again, their own record of throwing points over mistakes this year means he is unlikely to criticize Leclerc.
“I think he definitely drove at the limit, so there are things that can happen when you’re driving to the limit,” he said. “Why did this happen, is there anything else, we discuss and arbitrate with him, but now there is certainly no reason to blame him.”
“And I’m pretty sure he’ll learn. We’ve always seen that Charles is reacting very strongly and well when he makes mistakes. And I’m pretty sure that will come back to Hungary stronger and full of longing.”
Although Binotto tried to assuage the blame from Leclerc, he couldn’t hide the fact that the mistake cost him dearly in the broader championship picture. Again, he wants to put a positive dimension into the situation, but the task his team faces over the next ten races is unmistakably huge.
“What I told Charles is that things are more complicated, but not impossible, and we simply enjoy it more in case we can finally turn defeat into victory,” Binotto said. speak. “So we need to focus on each race.
“If I look back at the previous races, we always had great potential. It didn’t translate into the best result in terms of championship points, but right now there’s no reason why the next ten races shouldn’t be. may happen.
“So the potential is there. The drivers are fantastic. So I’m quite optimistic. Fortunately, in seven days we will be playing in Hungary again.”
