Charles Leclerc took back the words he spoke on radio after F1 Hungarian GP, as he felt his issue stemmed from front wing adjustment rather than chassis.
After leading by just for most part of the F1 Hungarian GP at a cloudy Hungaroring, Ferrari’s Leclerc was massively frustrated in the latter part of the grand prix. He was already voicing his frustration when Lando Norris switched to one stop, fearing that he will be caught up by the McLaren pair.
He controlled the pace in the first stint with good pace and clean air advantage, as even an undercut for Oscar Piastri didn’t work out. He lost to Norris the second time but had second despite the overcut he did on Piastri. But the Australian managed to catch him pretty quickly.
It was in the final stint when Leclerc started to loose pace and patience. He was all on the radio talking in code language. He thought the pace loss stemmed from a wrong front wing adjustment during the pit stop. But strangely, his race engineer didn’t clarify that it was not from that.
In fact, Ferrari were not too certain themselves. But post-race, they could ascertain an issue on the chassis side, clarifying that there was no issue on power unit and or them being conservative with regards to modes or pressure. He started loosing huge chunks of time.
So much so, that George Russell caught him and snatched third, leaving Leclerc to be content with fourth. “First of all, I need to take back the words I’ve said in the radio because I thought that it was coming from one thing, but then I got a lot more detail since I got out of the car,” he said to media.
“It was actually an issue coming from the chassis and nothing that we could have done differently. I started to feel the issue in Lap 40 or something like that, and then it got worse, laps after laps after laps, and towards the end we were two seconds off the pace. The car was just undriveable. But I mean, again, as I repeat myself, this was an issue and it’s an outlier. It shouldn’t ever happen again.
“I mean, I’m still very disappointed. We had one opportunity this year to win a race, which I think was this weekend. The first stint was perfect. The first laps of the second stint was really good as well. I think we were in pace to try and win that race. The last stint was a disaster when I started to have an issue in the chassis. I don’t yet how it was caused, but we will have a look at it.”
Elaborating further on the issue and team not revealing on radio about it, Leclerc added: “When I started to feel the issues, I didn’t really know where that came from. I thought it was from a change we did on the front wing at the pit stop, being too aggressive. But then, of course, it got a lot worse. It seemed a bit off to me.
“When I first felt the very strange behaviour of the car, I thought, if this is staying, it’s going to slip away from us. It wasn’t very consistent but yeah, every corner it was doing something different. I think it was quite tricky. Otherwise, I probably would have known and they would have told me. But yeah, apparently it wasn’t as obvious on data. However, now you can definitely confirm that there was a problem.”
He earned a 5s time penalty and one point on his superlicense too for erratic driving against Russell, who had to go around the second time at Turn 1. The Brit complained about Leclerc moving under braking, and the stewards felt the Monegasque to be driving erratically indeed to defend his place.
Leclerc knew Russell would be agitated, but he didn’t mind it. He would have been frustrated if he was on podium and lost it due to the penalty. “I knew I was on the limit but…I don’t have much opinion about it, I felt like I moved before braking and then I braked obviously angling my car towards the apex which is normally what I do, but I can imagine George being quite vocal on the radio,” he said.
“I don’t mind, especially on a race like this. If there was a safety car in the race, and I would have taken a five-second penalty, I probably would have been a lot more frustrated, but it wasn’t the case.” Team boss Frederic Vasseur addressed the potential issue in his media session.
He didn’t mind the radio messages from Leclerc, as he noted that the team wasn’t too sure of the root cause. He was frustrated on his side as well to lose out on a potential win. But he is not thinking too far ahead in terms of Ferrari’s resurgence. He acknowledged the dirty air situation for Piastri behind.
He was happy though with the pace that Leclerc showed, where he could have run for more laps in the first stint. He acknowledged the two car versus one scenario, but at the same time, noted that McLaren always had the inherent pace since they were not leaving the Monegasque alone at any time.
Radio chatter –
Vasseur: “Well, honestly, the situation was quite strange, that we were under control the first 40 laps of the race, that we were very in control the first hint, a bit more difficult the second one, but it was still manageable. And the last stint was a disaster, very difficult to drive, that the balance was not there. And, honestly, we don’t know exactly what’s happened so far. It means that we have to investigate if we have something broken on the chassis side or whatever. At one stage I thought that we would never finish the race, that we can be lucky in this situation to score points with P4.
“But, yeah, it’s really frustrating for us because I think we did the first pole position of the season, the first two stints went pretty well and we lost completely the pace on the last run. Yeah, it is tough. Yes, once we lost the pace, we lost two or three tenths. Today we lost two seconds. A bit different. And no, it was a completely different story about energy management [that Charles thought when on radio].”
Issue miscommunication –
Vasseur: “I think he lost the first lap of the last stint. He lost something like one second at one stage. Perhaps the message that you also interpret, he asked us if we didn’t do a mistake on the front wing. We adjusted the front wing, but not. We lost completely the pace. Then, perhaps a bit of snowball effect, but at the end of the day, from lap 38 to 43, we lost at least eight tenths. So far, no, but probably yes [we will find something]. When he says chassis, it’s because it has nothing to do with power unit. If it’s the equation, now we don’t know exactly what happened. The car is still in parc ferme and it’s a bit early stage. Surprising, because if we knew before [we would have solved the issue]. And no, no [we were not conserving anything].”
Strategy, fight against McLaren –
Vasseur: “I’m not a strategist of McLaren, but I had the feeling on the pit wall that Norris took this strategy by default, because he was 4 or 5 seconds behind Piastri. I think at this stage, Piastri was trying to attack Charles. He tried to do the undercut, it didn’t work. For them, it was a good attitude to not put the car in the same basket and to try something different. At the end, I think it was probably the same pace over the 70 laps. It’s always better to have two cars than one, but in this case, the issue is not there, the issue is on our side to try to understand why we lost the pace at the end. Now about the fight, first of all, I think you have to keep in mind also the dirty air. You do the pole position, but it’s always a bit easy to stay in front and to be behind. And I don’t know if the gap in the first stint is two-tenths with Piastri, or it’s one-tenth, but in this magnitude, I think the pace was there.
“We were even able to extend a little bit when we were under pressure with the pitstop. It means that we had the pace at this stage to do one or two-tenths more, or less. I think this part of the race went very well for us, that it was really under control, that we didn’t have the feeling to push too much. We were even able to extend, but we didn’t lose at all the consistency and the tyres. It means that it’s even worse for the frustration, because if in the first stint you are leading like this and you have to pit lap 12 because you have no tyres anymore, it’s like, OK, I pushed too much. But it was not the case at all today, that we stopped just to avoid the undercut, but we could have done on the same pace a couple of laps more. It’s frustrating.”
While Ferrari downplayed the situation under the generic chassis issue, Mercedes’ Russell reckoned it was to do with tyre pressure change keeping plank wear in mind. “Well, I saw how slow he was. I presumed something was not right,” he said to Sky Sports F1.
“The only thing we [Mercedes] can think of is that they were running the car too low to the ground, and they had to increase the tyre pressures for the last stint. Because they were using an engine mode that was making the engine slower at the end of the straight, which is where you have the most amount of plank wear.”
Here’s Charles Leclerc loosing to Oscar Piastri: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-hungarian-gp-piastri-overtakes-leclerc-for-p2-on-track.1839444784844827509
Here’s Charles Leclerc loosing to George Russell: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-hungarian-gp-russell-overtakes-leclerc-for-p3-after-close-battle-on-track.1839446110743029931
Here’s how F1 Hungarian GP panned out