A fan on Twitter has gone on an extraordinarily passionate rant about Charles Leclerc’s wheel-to-wheel racing abilities after they saw suggestions that he is the best in that department.
Leclerc claimed his third win of the 2022 season in Austria last weekend, and has been involved in some thrilling on-track battles with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and his team-mate Carlos Sainz this year.
The trio shocked and entertained us with some tremendous shows of wheel-to-wheel racing over the course of both the sprint and the race itself, and it was all nice and clean as they jostled for position.
Leclerc beat Verstappen to victory after a fascinating strategic battle had unfolded, although it was not without drama for the Scuderia.
Sainz retired from the race with a reliability issue late on just as he looked set to take second from Verstappen, before his 24-year-old team-mate began to suffer from throttle issues in the dying laps.
He took the chequered flag in front of an ever-celebratory orange army, but a fan had some criticism for the now five-time race winner following implications that he is the best close quarter racer on the grid.
They described previous incidents involving Leclerc as acts of “terrorism,” and they cited a fair few of them.
First on the agenda was the late move from the Ferrari driver that wiped out both Verstappen and then Racing Point driver Sergio Perez on the first lap of the Sakhir Grand Prix in 2020 – which the Mexican went on to win in remarkable fashion – before adding a clip of him hitting then team-mate Sebastian Vettel on the first lap of the Styrian Grand Prix in 2020.
He was trying to recover from an error in qualifying by the Maranello side in Monaco in 2019 that saw him start last and, in so doing, hit the Renault of Nico Hulkenberg at Rascasse, giving himself a puncture and eventually causing his retirement.
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The Monegasque hit Verstappen at the start of the 2019 Japanese Grand Prix, and they also bizarrely included an attempted pass on Perez that went wrong in Turkey a year later and cost him a position to Vettel on the final lap.
A clip of Leclerc moving across on Hamilton was added, as well as his crash in Imola this season in slippery conditions, although answers on a postcard as to what that had to do with wheel-to-wheel action.
The 24-year-old currently sits second in the Drivers’ Standings after his win in Spielberg on Sunday afternoon.