Charles Leclerc was unfortunate to collect Max Verstappen’s visor tear-off in his brake duct at the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix, forcing him for an extra stop, and hope a solution can be found in the future by disposing the tear-offs in the car.
Charles Leclerc was unfortunate to collect Max Verstappen’s visor tear-off in his brake duct at the That was one of of the unfortunate events that beset the Leclerc over the course of the Belgian race weekend, where he finished fifth, as a post race time penalty relegated him to sixth, as he now find himself third in the Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship, 98 points behind leader Verstappen.
Asked how he felt about that incident, Leclerc said: “I mean, in all fairness, you cannot calculate that.
“So it’s like this, I think maybe moving forward, it will be good that we maybe find a solution to keep the tear off inside the car.
“In this particular situation, I think somebody was using oil or something, and I could not see anything with my visors, all the drivers in front of me couldn’t see anything in the visors. And it happened that at the first moment of opportunity, we had to take off the the tear off, it was in this straight,” he explained.
What happened not Verstappen’s fault
“So I find myself with tear offs flying all over the place and in that case, you cannot do much as a driver so I mean, obviously not angry at all with Max, it is obviously not the fault of the drivers, but we might look at something to find a way to keep the tear offs somewhere in the car,” the Ferrari driver added.
Ferrari did not have the pace to keep up with Red Bull at Spa. Asked about his expectation for this weekend at Zandvoort, Leclerc responded: “I mean overall I think we’ve got a strong car.
“If you look the first part of the season we’ve always been very strong in corners,” he went on. “All the type of corners really…. Yes, slow/medium speed we are strong and again particularly because of traction.
“But if you look at Spa, they were strong everywhere. They [Red Bull] were strong in the straights, they were strong in corners. So let’s wait and see but should be better,” he cautioned.
When asked, Leclerc admitted he won’t feel bad if he crashed Verstappen’s party and won the Dutch Grand Prix, insisting: “You don’t feel bad whenever you win a race. But yeah, it’s going to be nice.
“I mean, the Holland fans are extremely passionate and obviously with Max being in the lead I’m pretty sure that there will be even more happy to be there. But hopefully we can win anyway,” the Ferrari driver hoped.
(Additional reporting by Agnes Carlier)