Charles Leclerc Slammed for Piling on Ferrari’s Issues as Major Weakness Gets Exposed

Published 05/08/2023, 5:53 PM EDT

The current narrative running in Formula 1 circles is that Ferrari is failing Charles Leclerc. In the past, drivers like Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso have come oh so close to winning with the Scuderia. However, for one reason or the other, this never materialized into championship glory. Naturally, the blame has always been squarely pinned onto the shoulders of the Maranello-based team.

But the 2023 season has tweaked the narrative a bit. This year, the pace deficit of Ferrari has been apparent. That being said, while Leclerc has been extracting the maximum he can from the SF-23 week in and week out, cracks have started to appear in the talent of the Monegasque.

Charles Leclerc blamed for Ferrari’s misfortunes

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The entire Miami Grand Prix weekend can be singled out to confirm this hypothesis. Or at least that is what Sky Sports F1 commentator and ex-F1 driver Martin Brundle thinks. Leclerc made a crucial mistake on his last flying lap during Q3 which then compromised his entire race on Sunday. But he’d made that same mistake during the same corner in Free Practice, wrecking the car.

This prompted Brundle to comment, “Leclerc crashes too much, he wastes Ferrari’s budget. In terms of pure speed, he’s as fast as anyone, even faster than anyone else, but he doesn’t feel the limits of the car.” [translated via Google Translate]

And while Brundle laid into Leclerc, the Monacan racing ace was as self-critical as ever.

Leclerc laments unacceptable Miami mistake

As soon as Leclerc cleared the debris of his SF-23, he was back to his media duties. While other drivers are always ready with a tailor-made response in the aftermath of a shunt of such magnitude, Leclerc was in a candid mood.

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He was quoted as saying, “More than the track, I think what’s unacceptable is doing twice the same mistake in the same corner. I am really disappointed with myself. I know that I’m also taking more risks than others in Q3, which is why most of the time why I’m doing good Q3s but this is too much.”

“Very disappointed with myself, I did the same mistake yesterday and this shouldn’t happen.”

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Written by:

Anirban Aly Mandal is a senior F1 writer at EssentiallySports, with over 500 articles published on the platform. Anirban's love for F1 started when he discovered a copy of F1 2014 while playing on his computer, and he has since then dived deep into the world of motorsports. Anirban's expertise goes beyond just writing - he has also written several academic papers focused on the domain of motorsports.

Charles Leclerc Slammed for Piling on Ferrari’s Issues as Major Weakness Gets Exposed

Charles Leclerc blamed for Ferrari’s misfortunes

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Leclerc laments unacceptable Miami mistake