adminPARIS. – “If I keep doing mistakes like this, then I deserve to not win the championship.”
Charles Leclerc was brutal in his assessment of the mistake that meant he crashed out of the lead of the French Grand Prix, but then he had reason to be.
The race was far from won at that point. The Ferrari driver’s title rival Max Verstappen had just pitted for fresh tyres. Leclerc was going to stay out for a few more laps. He would have rejoined behind the Red Bull but with fresher tyres, and the question would have been whether he could have overtaken to reclaim the lead.
But he never got to find out, and the error handed an easy win to Verstappen – his seventh in 12 races – and, more to the point, a colossal 63-point championship lead.
With 10 races to go, 25 points for a victory, a seven-point difference between first and second place and Ferrari not exactly having the smoothest of seasons, one does not have to be a mathematician to see just how steep a mountain Leclerc has to climb now.
“I am performing at the highest level of my career,” a downcast Leclerc said. “But if I keep doing those mistakes it is pointless.
“I am giving away too many points. Seven in Imola; 25 here because we were probably the strongest car on track.
“So if we lose the championship by 32 points at the end of the year, I will know where they are coming from and it is unacceptable.”
Right now, despite Leclerc’s seven pole positions, this just does not look like it is going to be Ferrari’s year.
After three races, he led Verstappen by 46 points, thanks to two wins and a second place, and two retirements for the world champion. And it looked like the title was Leclerc’s and Ferrari’s to lose.
But then it all started to go wrong.
Leclerc spun in the closing stages of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix trying to pass Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Perez for second place, and turned a third place into sixth. But until France, the fault had nearly all been the team’s.
Twice Leclerc’s engine failed while he was leading – in Spain and Azerbaijan, which led to a start from the back in Canada because of grid penalties for using too many engine parts.
Twice, the team’s strategists contrived to turn a certain Leclerc victory into a fourth place with bungled decision-making – in Monaco and at Silverstone.
Leclerc looked to have begun to get his season back on track with a convincing victory in Austria two weeks ago – where, as in France, Verstappen pitted first, leaving Leclerc to catch and re-pass him. Which he did. Three times.
But now Leclerc has dropped his own clanger, and in doing so he has revived the old assessments of him, that he was an extravagantly talented and brilliantly fast driver, but a bit too prone to mistakes.
A glance back through his Ferrari career underlines how he earned that reputation. – Mailonline
Online Reporter