FORMULA 1

Charles Leclerc counters Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto

Franz Tost Germany

After having another heartbreaking finish at the 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix, Ferrari star Charles Leclerc counters Ferrari boss’ race pace claims.

At the 2022 Hungarian GP, Ferrari lost out another race to the title rival Red Bull. The team and Leclerc were favorites going into the race day.

Adding icing to the cake was the fact that title rival Max Verstappen was starting P10 on the grid. This meant that Ferrari and Leclerc could go to get the maximum possible difference from Max Verstappen in the race.

However, on the contrary, ended up giving the maximum possible difference to Verstappen as the Dutch went on to win the race.

Charles Leclerc was definitely disappointed by the finish. The Monegasque seems to be losing confidence in the Scuderia.

Now, Charles Leclerc has lost almost 100 points due to reliability issues, his own errors, and Ferrari’s strategic blunders.

Nevertheless, the Ferrari strategists again came under the scanner yet again as another strategic blunder cost Ferrari a probable win at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Binnoto blames the loss on ‘race pace’

A deluded Mattia Binotto continued to refuse strategy played a role in the disastrous outcome. Rather, blamed it on the car performance and race pace:

“The performance of our car was not as we expected,”

said the Italian.

“I think it’s important to say the pace of the car today was not as expected, [considering] the speed we had when we look back to Friday and the race simulations from Friday,”

said Binotto.

“It was totally different conditions, cooler but overall the speed today was not quick enough, whichever tyres we were using. Something [was] wrong with the car, how we set it up for the conditions of today, that made as well a harder life for the tyres, and certainly as a consequence, the hard was working very badly,”

added Binotto.

Asked if Ferrari could have won the Hungarian GP in any manner, Binnoto replied:

“I don’t think so. As I said before, we were lacking pace and I don’t think we would have won today. Because it’s the first time in these races that we didn’t have the speed so much to be there for the victory.”

Rumors are arising that the Ferrari boss is probably facing a threat to his position and might be removed in the summer break.

Charles Leclerc disagrees with Binnoto

Charles Leclerc was certainly not happy with the outcome of the race. It was clear that the Ferrari was the fastest car on the Mediums by quite some margin.

The Monegasque wasn’t ready to take any excuses and refused to believe that it was the car to be blamed.

“I don’t think so because the pace was very good on the medium tyre [used in the first and second stint],”

said Leclerc.

“That was strong, it was really good.”

“But then on the hard, obviously, we lost all the pace. We did one stop more than everybody, losing 20 seconds, plus the five or six laps on the hard [it was 15] where we lost a second per lap. This is a lot of race time,”

said the 24-year-old.

“The second stint should have been longer. The first was the right moment to stop and we made the right choice there, but in the second stint, I don’t know why we cut it short and went on the hard,”

added Charles Leclerc.

Ferrari pitted Leclerc on lap 40 reacting to Max Verstappen’s pit stop on the previous lap. According to Leclerc, there was no need for the pit stop that early as he could have gone for more laps.

The second stint of Charles Leclerc was just 18 laps long on mediums.

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure this was his code, to put us under pressure, But I don’t think we should have reacted to that because then it was a snowball effect for us and we lost a lot more than we should have,”

analyzed Leclerc.

Charles Leclerc is now 80 points behind Max Verstappen going into the summer break. The Championship now almost seems finished for the Monegasque.

For more updates, follow us on Twitter.

For more sports updates, make sure to follow us on:



Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To Top