Formula One: Hard tyre choice a ‘disaster’ for unhappy Leclerc
- A very disappointed Leclerc blamed a decision to switch to hard tyres for seeing him plummet down the order and come home P6 in Hungary
- It was also a disappointing result for Alfa Romeo, with Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu finishing P13 and admitting their strategy in Hungary did not pay off
Charles Leclerc lamented a disastrous tyre strategy in Hungary on Sunday as Ferrari faced accusations their mistakes were handing both Formula One titles to rivals Red Bull.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen took his eighth win in 13 races to go a massive 80 points clear of Leclerc in the standings, despite starting from 10th on the grid and suffering a 360 degree spin.
Ferrari started with Carlos Sainz on the front row and Leclerc lining up third on medium tyres but ended up with neither on the podium and three pit stops dropping the latter from a potential win to sixth.
“Everything was under control and for some reason, I don’t know what we did to go on the hards,” Leclerc said of the second pit stop to hards – a compound shunned by winners Red Bull and runners-up Mercedes.
The evidence warning against the hard option was already there after Alpine struggled on it. Leclerc then had to pit again for softs.
“I said on the radio I was very comfortable on the medium and I wanted to go as long as possible with those tyres because the feeling was good. I don’t know why we took a different decision,” the Ferrari driver said.
“The pace on my side, I was pretty happy. The only thing is that obviously everybody will remember the last part of the race where it was a disaster for me, especially the hards. That’s where I lost the race basically.
“I lost 20 seconds with the pits, another maybe six seconds on five laps on the hard because I was just all over the place with this tyre.”