Charles Leclerc admitted he felt “hurt” by his botched race strategy in Monaco that cost him the chance of a home victory.
The Ferrari driver made his feelings known in no uncertain terms when brought in for dry tyres by Ferrari, with his race engineer telling him to come in and then the team quickly changing their mind, but by then it was too late.
His stop meant he had to wait for team-mate Carlos Sainz to leave the team’s pit box, and the time loss cost him not only the lead of the race but also put him out of the podium places.
While the top four all ran extremely close together in the final stages of a gripping race, the difficulty to overtake around Monaco left Leclerc stuck behind all three ahead of him, with Sergio Perez going on to win for the first time this season.
Leclerc was left nine points behind Max Verstappen at the top of the Drivers’ Championship on a day when it would have been possible to regain the lead at the top of the standings – and needless to say he was not happy with how Ferrari had handled things.
“Let down is not the word. Sometimes mistakes can happen, but there have been too many mistakes today overall,” Leclerc told Sky F1 after the race.
Would not like to be on the Ferrari pit wall having to listen to Charles Leclerc right now 👀 #MonacoGP #F1
— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) May 29, 2022
“Obviously in those conditions you rely a little bit on what the team can see because you don’t see what the others are doing with intermediates, with dry tyres.
“I’ve been asked questions whether I wanted to go from extreme wets to slicks and I said yes, but not now. It will be a bit later in the race.
“But I don’t understand what made us change our mind and go on the intermediates. We got undercut and I stopped behind Carlos.
“There have been a lot of mistakes and we cannot afford to do that. It’s hard, as it’s been the other years here [too], so I’m getting used to getting back home disappointed.
“We cannot…
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