Leclerc explains ‘extremely frustrating’ loss of pace in Hungary after losing out on ‘one opportunity to win’

Charles Leclerc has explained the problems behind his “extremely frustrating” drop-off in pace during the Hungarian Grand Prix, with the Monegasque – who had started from pole position – slipping backwards to fourth on a day where he had hoped to take a victory.

The race had started off well for Leclerc, having held the lead before also managing to keep McLaren’s Oscar Piastri behind him during the first round of pit stops.

However, after Lando Norris put himself ahead of both via an alternative strategy, Leclerc looked to be struggling in the latter stages of the race and was soon overtaken by Piastri for second place.

The Ferrari driver then faced a challenge from George Russell in a battle for third and, as well as losing another position to the Mercedes driver, found himself with a five-second time penalty for driving erratically during the battle.

After crossing the line in P4, Leclerc cut a downbeat figure as he discussed what had happened to cause his lack of pace later on, with the issue turning out to be different to what the 27-year-old had initially thought.

“From around Lap 40 we had a problem with the chassis, so now I’ve had more details about it,” said Leclerc. “In the car obviously I had no idea what was going on. I mean I had an idea, but it was a wrong idea because I thought it was something that was in our control.

“Unfortunately we had an issue on the chassis, so I don’t have much to add on that. It’s just extremely frustrating when you are fighting for a win and when we had the pace that we had at the beginning of the race, and we lose absolutely everything later on, it’s very frustrating.”

With the race bringing the first part of the season to a close, Leclerc was quizzed on what his mindset now is as the sport heads into its traditional summer break.

“Very disappointed,” he conceded. “I don’t take any positives from this weekend when we ended the weekend like that.

“When we have one opportunity in a year to win a race, we need to take it and today we didn’t. Now we will analyse what are the reasons why we had this problem. I don’t think it’s anything that we had in our control, but we’ll check.”