03/08/2019
NEWS STORY
While it is admirable that Charles Leclerc is his own harshest critic, always the first to point the finger of blame at himself, the fact is that just one week after crashing out in Germany, the youngster was almost eliminated from qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix for yet another mistake.
At the very start of Q1, the Ferrari driver lost the rear end of his car in the final corner and spun backwards into the barriers.
Though he had already posted a time and the damage appeared to only affect his rear wing, his team faced a worrying time as it sought to check that there was no other damage, while keeping an eye on the timesheets as the track evolved and rivals got ever faster.
"I've been very lucky to go again," said the Monegasque, who eventually qualified fourth. "I have to thank the team very much for what they've done but it was a completely unnecessary mistake at that point.
That's two mistakes in two Grand Prix," he admitted. The first one wasn't acceptable but this one is definitely not acceptable, and if I had stayed in the wall it would have been a lot worse.
"I need to learn from these mistakes," he continued. "This is the second one in qualifying at an unnecessary time, so I need to understand and work on that.
"On the other hand, it was very positive in Q3 on my side. Of course, we are half a second down; that's not where we want to be, but I'm very happy with my lap overall."
Asked if today's incident, and the qualifying crash n Azerbaijan, had an effect on him, he said: "It's a little bit different now. Obviously Baku was trying too hard. But this one I had Sebastian starting the lap in front; I knew I would lose a little bit of downforce, but I have just been surprised by this and it's completely my fault. I will work on it."
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Hungaroring, here.