Furious Charles Leclerc reveals if jammed throttle was responsible for French GP crash

Charles Leclerc crashed out of the French Grand Prix while leading.

Charles Leclerc will have to delve deeper into the data to figure out if an issue with his Ferrari might have put him out of the French Grand Prix, but he pins the blame firmly on himself for his crash.

The Monegasque was running around in the lead after Max Verstappen pitted from second and, on older tyres, he lost the back end going through Turn 11, and that was all she wrote as he slammed into the wall and out of the race.

He screamed “no” on the radio after the incident, before suggesting that the throttle might have become stuck open.

Once he had taken the time to collect himself though, he landed on the crash being on his shoulders.

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“Mistake,” he told Sky Sports when asked what happened.

“As I’ve been saying, I think I’m performing at the highest level of my career but if I keep doing these mistakes then it’s pointless to perform at a very high level.

“I’m losing too many points, seven I think was in Imola, 25 here because honestly we probably were the strongest car on track today.

“So yeah, if we lose the championship by 32 points at the end of the season, I will know where they are coming from and it’s unacceptable.

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“I just need to get on top of those things.”

The five-time race winner believes that he was simply pushing too hard, and made a costly error as a consequence.

“I go through the same process all the time, try to analyse… the snap was a bit of a weird one so [I will] look into the data, try to understand if there’s nothing that I don’t know yet,” explained Leclerc.

“To me, it’s a mistake and that’s it, I just pushed too much and I lost the rear and it’s been a very difficult weekend for me.

“I struggled a lot with the balance of the car, I like oversteery cars but when it’s warm like this, it’s very difficult to be consistent.

“And I’ve [found it] very difficult to put laps together, and I did a mistake at the wrong moment.”

Verstappen went on to win the race in Le Castellet as Sergio Perez had to settle for fourth behind Sir Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, so he leads Leclerc by 63 points in the Drivers’ Standings going into the Hungarian Grand Prix next weekend.