Leclerc lashes out at Ferrari as Monaco curse continues

Charles Leclerc finished fourth in Monaco having started on pole after a litany of errors by Ferrari.

Charles Leclerc was audibly frustrated over the airwaves during the Monaco Grand Prix after nothing seemed to go his way at his home race once again.

The Monegasque started form pole after putting in a scintillating lap on Saturday, and he was leading the pack after a delayed start to the race due to the wet conditions.

The track quickly began to dry though, and Red Bull made the quick decision to pit both Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen for Inters, while Leclerc and team-mate Carlos Sainz stayed out on Wets, determined to switch straight to Slicks during the transition period.

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However, Ferrari bizarrely called Leclerc into the pits after Perez had already managed to execute the undercut on him, so he lost the place to the Mexican.

The 24-year-old would then lose out to team-mate Sainz when he skipped the Inters and bolted on a set of Hards, and he was forced to double stack behind the Spaniard.

The legacy of the lost time was that Verstappen then took third away from Leclerc, and the anticipation of the lost time was the reason Leclerc’s race engineer changed his mind and told him to stay out.

The four-time racer winner had already entered the pit lane though, so his frustration boiled over.

“Why?! What are you doing?!” shouted an infuriated Leclerc.

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He was then told that the three drivers in front him would be taking their tyres to the end, and this was solidified when Mick Schumacher’s crash brought out another red flag.

“Perfect,” was the response from a fed up Leclerc.

He would ultimately finish fourth behind Verstappen while Perez beat Sainz to victory and, while he does not want to say he was “let down” by his team, he is left ruing a series of unforced errors on the pit wall.

“Let down is not the word,” he told Sky Sports.

“Sometimes mistakes can happen but there’s been too many mistakes today overall.

“In those conditions you rely a little bit on what the team can see because you don’t see what the others are doing with Intermediates, with dry tyres.

“I’ve been asked questions whether I wanted to go from extreme Wets to the Slicks and I said yes but not now, it would be a bit later on the race.

“But I don’t understand what made us change our mind and go on these Intermediates.

“We got undercut and I stopped behind Carlos, there have been a lot of mistakes and we cannot afford to do that.

“It’s hard as it’s been the other years here so I’m getting used to get back home disappointed but we cannot do that, especially in the moment that we are in now.

“We are extremely strong, our pace is strong, we need to take those opportunities.

“We cannot lose so many points like this. It’s not even from first to second, it’s from first to fourth because after the first mistake we did another one.

“I love my team and I’m sure that we’ll come back stronger, it’s hurts a lot.”

The first questionable call from the Scuderia was followed swiftly by the indecision in the pit lane, so Leclerc simply could not contain his frustration.

READ: Valtteri Bottas: ‘This result is an outlier’

“I think the first one was a very clear decision and a very wrong one and from that moment onwards the next started,” he added.

“I don’t know if it’s panic… I obviously don’t hear all the background radio in the team but this is not up to me to judge.

“Obviously the message that I had was unclear, the last one wasn’t clear because I was told to come in and then to stay out but I was already in the pit lane.

“And that’s where I basically let it all out on the radio and screamed because I just couldn’t do anything and I knew that I was done.”

Leclerc is now nine points behind Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship following another hugely disappointing afternoon at his home race.

The silver lining though is that he finally saw the chequered flag at his home event, a feat he had never achieved since his first appearance in Formula 2 in 2017.