'Critics who label Charles Leclerc error-prone have got it wrong'

More than once now, we’ve seen Ferrari top free practice on Friday, in France by as much as half a second, but have higher degradation over the long runs. They then seem to dial it back a bit on Saturday morning, with a set-up better suited to the race. And Leclerc, when asked, has always been bullish about his race prospects.

In Barcelona, Charles seemed to have Red Bull handled in the race before his engine let go. After that, through a combination of unreliability and Fred Karno pit operation, we didn’t get a proper read over the next four races, although Verstappen looked highly convincing at Silverstone before he hit debris. Ferrari, however, looked even more convincing in the manner they won Austria.

Ricard, until Leclerc lost it, was fascinating. Max had a few looks in the early laps, but realised the DRS effect wasn’t quite strong enough. The Ferrari had its lead out to 2sec as the pit stop window approached – Leclerc’s biggest margin to that point – and Red Bull went for about as aggressive a first stop as feasible.

Such is the degradation at Ricard that the undercut is powerful, but when Verstappen left the pits behind Norris and Alonso, you figured that Ferrari might just about cover him if they pitted Leclerc immediately.

They didn’t though, and as soon as they didn’t, you knew that there was no chance of Leclerc retaining his lead. So you figured that Ferrari thought its best chance of winning was to maximise the tyre offset, as they did in Austria.

But, from the radio transmissions, it was tricky to work out whether they were on plan A, B, C or Z, and you have to think that Leclerc was confused as well. If the plan was to extend his medium-tyre opening stint to maximise the offset, why was he pushing quite so hard at Le Beausset? That looked like a driver who thought he was about to be called in. So, did the team contribute with less than decisive calls. We’ve seen it before…

Leclerc being Leclerc, took it on the chin, said it was an unacceptable mistake, that he didn’t deserve to win the championship doing things like that, and asked what was the point of having pace if he was going to do that?

The psychology of such brutal self-assessment is interesting. When a top-quality performer makes a howler, it often doesn’t compute, and they look for an explanation that exonerates them. John McEnroe, for example, tended to have his most heated linesman / umpire rants within a couple of points of missing a shot that, for him, was a given.

At first, I suspected that Leclerc was doing likewise, blaming a throttle problem such as he’d experienced in the closing laps in Austria, but what he was referring too was not getting the throttle response needed to back himself out of the tyres.

But, being so tough on himself led to an avalanche of pundits and social media posters suggesting that he was too error-prone to challenge the likes of Verstappen and Hamilton. I very much doubt that. People who don’t easily admit to their mistakes often have insecurities about them. People as honest as Leclerc tend to be very comfortable in their own skin. And confident that they can overcome their foibles.

Every driver performing at the required level is prone to making a mistake, whether that be racing wheel-to-wheel or pushing hard in free air. All the greats have done it. Think of Senna and you think of Monaco ’88, tagging the Portier wall leading by almost a minute, or taking his front wing off when he had all the time in the world to lap Satoru Nakajima at Brazil in 1990.

Think Schumacher and it’s Adelaide ’94, Jerez ’97 and that awfully transparent British School of Motoring learner driver ‘error’ at Rascasse in 2006.

Hamilton? Okay, for 300 races it’s a pretty short list, but no-one’s perfect when the pressure’s on. There was Barcelona 2016 with Rosberg when he seemed to carry the can for what was probably the very definition of a racing incident.

Then, last year, the man held up as the paragon of error-free consistency, wasn’t quite. He was extraordinarily lucky with an Imola red flag for the Russell / Bottas accident when he’d made what looked like a costly error. And that 32-point gain at Silverstone was pretty preposterous after Copse, when the apex was practically in the next county. Although everyone blames Michael Masi, Lewis shouldn’t really have been anywhere near the championship come Abu Dhabi.

Verstappen? Well, he hit quite a few things in the opening half dozen races of 2018, predominantly Red Bull team mate Daniel Ricciardo at Baku. Then, last year, there was Monza. And you can argue that in Saudi Arabia he was highly fortunate to get away with as blatant-looking a professional foul as anything Norman Hunter or Tommy Smith managed without at least a grid drop.

Leclerc, admittedly, has some previous. There was taking out Ferrari team mate Vettel at Austria’s T3 in 2020, although Ferrari had served them up such an awful shed that I suspect that might have been a pre-race agreement so they could get an early flight home…

There were the Baku and Monaco qualifying crashes, the latter preventing him taking up pole position due to transmission damage that manifested itself on the warm-up lap, a real hand-wringing moment for Charles. But on both occasions, it’s probably fair to say that he was transcending the car.

Leclerc is never going to point out that Ferrari has thrown away three times as many points as he has, but that’s the reality. Again though, it’s the kind of thing that happens when you are fighting a combination like Verstappen and Red Bull.

When you can’t make in-season performance-enhancing engine developments, all you can really do is homologate something that might be a bit on the edge and then come up with ‘reliability fixes.’ Barcelona, Baku and Austria for Carlos Sainz, might suggest that Ferrari has pushed that a bit too far.

The British GP failure to pit both cars was a howler in hindsight but, lacking decent tyre offset data, would you have been comfortable pitting your lead driver and expecting him to pass Lewis Hamilton on a relatively fresh of boots, at Silverstone? That was a tougher call than it looked.

Monaco was probably the worst. You could have been blind and snoring, and still probably been quicker at spotting Sergio Perez turning the timing screens purple on a set of intermediates than the Ferrari pit wall.

And I really don’t get what they were doing with Sainz last weekend. In theory, a hard/medium one-stop strategy should be easier to achieve than a medium/hard one-stop, because you’re on the more durable tyre with a heavy fuel load on a track with less rubber down. So, stopping him a second time, just as he was in the process of overtaking Perez for third place, was a bit of a puzzler.

Okay, some cack-handedness in the pits had burdened him with a 5sec penalty and they thought he mightn’t be able to extend that much of a gap, but what was the harm in giving it a go? It can’t have been safety concerns about a tyre failure either – at Ricard there’s nothing to hit until you get to Marseilles.

Now, if it had been the Jean Todt era, Sainz would have been pitted to nick a point from Verstappen, as he did, for the potential benefit of Leclerc further down the line. But I’d bet on a bit more Fred Karno than such decisive ruthlessness…

I may be wrong, but over time I’d be surprised if a talent like Leclerc turns out to be more error-prone than anyone else.