Charles Leclerc Apologizes For Fiery Ferrari Radio Rants In Hungarian GP

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc failed to capitalize on a shocking pole position at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Through his career, the Hungaroring has not been Leclerc’s best track – he tends to have issues with extracting pace, a rarity for the Monegasque.

Against the long odds, he delivered an amazing lap in Q3 and looked certain to get a podium at the very least.

Instead, Leclerc ended up losing performance due to an issue with the car’s chassis, leaving him ripe for the picking on track.

After an impressive first stint where he kept his lead, Leclerc was down massively on pace in the second half of the race.

When he pitted for the first time, Ferrari had to adjust the car because the plank on the bottom of the car was too worn out.

The team raised the air pressure of the tires, raising the ride height. This change ended up leading to a loss of pace.

During the race, Leclerc was furious with the team over the radio.

“I can feel what we discussed before the race… we need to discuss those things before doing them,” he said on the radio.

“We are going to lose this race with these things. We are losing so much time.”

After making his second pit stop, the problems only grew.

“This is so incredibly frustrating,” Leclerc added later on.

“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.”

The Formula 1 veteran apologized for his intense radio rants when speaking to the media after the race.

“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.”

Considering how well he is driving this season, his disappointment feels understandable, considering how hard he works to extract the best possible result every race weekend.

McLaren is the dominant car, and Leclerc feels like he has to take advantage anytime the championship-leading team is on the back foot.

His first stint’s pace was good enough for a race win if he kept it up, but the Ferrari star was robbed of the chance to do so by factors out of his control.

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