F1 News: Charles Leclerc Talks Strange Ferrari Strategy At Belgian GP
Despite Charles Leclerc’s bad luck and the straight-up weirdness of Ferrari’s ‘strategy’, the Monegasque isn’t frustrated with the team, despite fans being not so understanding. The driver had done well to find himself in P5 after a challenging race where he’d had to pit thanks to a visor tear-off getting stuck in a brake duct.
But weirdly, despite him pushing forward as much as he could, Ferrari decided to pit him again with two laps to go with the aim to get the fastest lap of the race. This put him right in front of Fernando Alonso when he re-entered the track, with him quickly getting overtaken by the Alpine driver who was able to use DRS.
This added stress gave fans small heart attacks, but fortunately, Leclerc was able to take back the place, but thanks to this traffic, wasn’t able to get the fastest lap, with that going to race winner Max Verstappen instead. On top of this, Leclerc gained a 5-second penalty for speeding in the pits during this stop thanks to a faulty sensor that had been damaged by the increased heat from the visor tear-off early in the race.
This was enough for fans to call out Ferrari on social media, but Leclerc remained calm.
“At the end, it’s more frustrating to see the delta of pace there was between Red Bull and us, which is the thing we need to work on,” he admitted. He then took complete blame for the speeding: “Nothing to do with the team.”
“If you look at Red Bull, they were on another level, and they found something this weekend that is a bit worrying for us,” he said before admitting that his chances at winning the championship had drastically been reduced.
“They are extremely quick in the straights, it looks like they have no downforce, but then they get into the corner, and they are as quick as us, or quicker. So, it’s a bit worrying.”
Fans had also questioned Ferrari’s questioning over the radio, with some likening it to a survey being conducted by the team while the driver tried to race.
“No, we’ve always done that. This time we were a bit clearer because we were a bit in no man’s land and nobody was fighting with us, so we had more freedom to speak about it.”
