"I need to take back the words," says Charles Leclerc after heavily criticising his team during the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Converting his shock pole into the Maranello team's first win of the season was always going to be a tall order, but a podium finish appeared very much on the cards for the Monegasque.

The first sign of trouble appeared when the youngster, while leading the race, asked "what's going on with these cuts", leading to speculation over whether he meant his engine was cutting out.

Shortly after his first stop, while running second, behind Norris who had yet to pit, Leclerc said: "I can feel what we discussed before the race, we need to discuss before doing those things".

Shortly after, he added: "We are going to lose the race with these things. We are losing so much time."

With around twenty laps remaining, and having been demoted to third by Piastri, Leclerc said: "We've lost all competitiveness, it's just undrivable. Now just 3.9s ahead of Russell, he added. "You just had to listen to me and I would have found a different way managing these issues. It's a miracle if we finish on the podium."

He didn't, the Mercedes driver passing him on Lap 62 after two failed attempts, with the stewards adding salt to Leclerc's wound by issuing a time penalty for erratic driving.

At race end, the youngster was asked what those "things" were that he had been referring to.

"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 told reporters.

"It was actually an issue coming from the chassis and nothing that we could have done differently," he insisted. "I started to feel the issue on Lap 40 or something like that, and then it got worse, lap after lap after lap, and towards the end we were two seconds off the pace. And the car was just undriveable."

Pushed on exactly what he had been referring to, he replied: "I spoke too quickly, I guess.

"I don't know yet how it was caused," he said of the mysterious issue, "but we'll look into it. 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.

"This was an issue and it's an outlier," he added. "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 on pace to try and win that race. The last stint was a disaster when I started to have an issue in the chassis."

Curiouser and curiouser.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Editor, 04/08/2025 22:55

"@ dejan

At my age they are all youngsters... even Fernando and Lewis."

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2. Posted by dejan, 04/08/2025 21:21

"He's not a "youngster" by F1 standards so that's not an excuse for his behavior.

Max Verstappen is the same age and I haven't seen that term used for him in a while. People say in past tense things that young Verstappen used to do, but how he's matured now that he's a four time champion."

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Leclerc rows back on team criticism

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