From hero to zero. The Monegasque driver, fresh off his first ever home GP win, was forced to retire from the Canadian round due to an engine issue. Following Sainz’s collision with Albon, Ferrari suffered from its first double DNF since Baku 2022.
Leclerc talked about the gremlins that ultimately forced him to stop. The 26-year-old explained how much time he was losing per lap and how it felt behind the wheel.
“I don’t know what happened. Obviously we were losing a second to, at first I think it was six tenths but then some laps it was 1.2, sometimes it was 1.5, sometimes it was one second.
“Every time I was going on power I didn’t know what I would get, and that was first of all very difficult to drive, very frustrating because in the straight I would get overtaken by everybody.”
The situation is even more disappointing considering the rather positive start he had had, passing Tsunoda and Albon on the opening lap.
Then it was a case of trying to be quick in the corners to pull out a gap and avoid getting overtaken on the straights. All that while changing a lot of switches each lap.
Ultimately it proved futile.
“And very annoying because I had like 10 or 15 switches per lap to change, to try and reset everything and to try to make it work.
“In the first part of the race I think we did quite a good job managing that and because we were in very wet conditions, or wet conditions, we could recover in corners so I was still believing we could finish in points, but then as soon as it dried up I was a sitting duck in the straight so that was it.”
Leclerc added it was easier to manage the switch changes in the wet because you have to focus and concentrate on the circuit so much when there is a very narrow dry line.
“Actually I found it a bit better when it was fully wet, the tricky part was when it was half dry, half wet, you’ve got to look at your steering wheel and there you’ve got only one line and if you are off by two or three, five centimetres you are done, so that was very tricky.“
