In Defence Of Charles Leclerc
I was going to do this as a quick aside in my first driver rankings of the season, but then realised I had a lot more frustration to let out about Sky F1’s coverage of the Bahrain Grand Prix than I first thought.
Charles Leclerc is an incredible racing driver. He has earned his stripes amongst many with his raw speed, putting in many electric qualifying runs over the years, but I think more impressive for me in the last few years is the fact, despite Ferrari’s tyre wear troubles, he’s still shown amazing tyre management, race craft and race pace (an area he consistently has been two tenths faster in than Sainz over their first three seasons together). He’s a driver who deserves his team to deliver the whole package in terms of car and operations but that’s not come yet. Instead, he’s been on the receiving end of terrible strategic calls, dreadful reliability or flat-out sloppy work from mechanics. It can easily be argued that Ferrari played a huge role in costing him around 100 points in 2022 and roughly 70 points in 2023. This display of incompetence has carried on into 2024. Charles qualified on the front row for a sixth consecutive race, out-qualifying his teammate for the main Grand Prix for an eighth consecutive round, but a change of the front left brake duct exit deflector led to a one-hundred-plus degree temperature imbalance. Charles drove a fantastic race still, and while what could’ve been a comfortable P2 turned into a hard-fought P4, he managed the issue admirably, even taking the fastest lap for everyone who was not in Formula Verstappen.
Yet, despite an incredible effort, it went unnoticed amongst Sky F1’s pundits. Ferrari’s ongoing trend of throwing away points has done serious damage to his reputation, with there being many reactionary and ungrounded takes coming from people meant to be analysts. Usually, Leclerc being underestimated doesn’t bother me, but with some of the things that came from pundits mouths this weekend, I feel like it’s time to come to the defence of Charles Leclerc.
“It seems like Charles has a lot of bad luck during the races. But maybe that’s because Carlos manages these things better. Carlos is a thinking driver.” - Damon Hill
Saying Carlos manages these things better is a take which has zero proof to back it up. Can any of these pundits describe a time when Sainz had to manage an issue like having a huge imbalance in front brake temperature?
Secondly, since when was Charles Leclerc not a thinking driver? Seriously this should’ve never been a narrative in the first place because Leclerc is constantly on it with strategic suggestions. Again it’s another example of Leclerc’s reputation taking a hit because of something Ferrari did. If Ferrari listened to Leclerc at Monaco 2022 for example, when Leclerc wanted to stay out to go from wet tyres to slick tyres, then would people push this narrative half as much as they do? Plus even if there should’ve been doubt about Charles’ ability to think, that debate should’ve ended after Abu Dhabi last season where he tried letting Perez with a penalty through so he could’ve slotted in between himself and Russell to help the constructors championship fight.
How would being a thinking driver change the fact that Leclerc’s two front brakes were over one hundred degrees apart in temperature? As well as that, Charles did think. As soon as the issue stabilised (which doesn’t mean it was solved by the way, it just means it wasn’t getting worse anymore) he adjusted and delivered a fantastic drive. I hate ‘fastest lap’ as a meaningful metric but as said above, outside of Verstappen Leclerc set the best lap of the race. He fought back to 4th place making a move on Russell who had an issue which Martin Brundle said was easier to manage. Were people expecting him to use psychic powers for the first twenty laps of the lap to accurately predict how a worsening problem was going to affect the car into every braking zone?
Imagine if I came out and said that if Damon Hill was more of a thinking driver and managed things better, he would’ve won the 1997 Hungarian Grand Prix (where he suffered a hydraulic pump failure which left him stuck in third gear with an intermittent throttle with three laps to go), it would be a nonsensical thing to try and blame him for but that’s the standard now.
“There have been moments where things happened in Charles’ garage that weren’t necessarily happening on Carlos’ side, on race day.
“That’s because it seemed like Carlos was ahead on a few things.”
“Charles, maybe, relies on his speed quite a lot.” - Naomi Schiff
Charles Leclerc is the only driver on the grid where he is expected to be the driver, the chief mechanic, a race engineer, a strategist, a weatherman, and as mentioned above, a psychic. These ‘pundits’ probably would expect him to change the tires himself as well. Also, what’s the insinuation here? That he isn’t holding their hands while they change the brake duct exit deflector? By the way, do we ever think Naomi will explain what these ‘few things’ Sainz is ahead on which means Ferrari *checks notes* doesn’t botch replacing a part on his car? It’s a comment with no substance to it, and nobody will try to explain what it means. People are too quick to push a narrative that Leclerc engages his right foot more than his brain but it’s just not an argument that holds up.
“Has Charles matured enough where he could take a title fight right the way through, without dropping the ball?” - Damon Hill
Again, Leclerc has lost roughly 170 points in the last two seasons through bad ‘luck’, with Ferrari’s mistakes making up the bulk of that. Why are the question marks around him and not Ferrari? Ferrari have not once given Charles Leclerc a championship-winning package. By package, I don’t just mean the car (but by the way, they haven’t given him a title-contending car for a full season yet either), I mean how the team operates as well. I do believe, under Vasseur’s leadership, that they can deliver him that package, but until then the scrutiny has to be on the team and not Leclerc. Also, why is it always ‘Does Charles have the maturity?’ and not ‘Does Carlos have the speed?’. Leclerc has won the qualifying head-to-head and the race head-to-head every season, yet you’ll never see a think piece questioning Sainz’s credentials. I would understand not doing a think piece on Sainz if he was just viewed as a midfield guy in a top team where the expectations of him are lower, but pundits wax lyrical about him as a driver who belongs in a top team. Like Karun Chandok did a whole bit in the week saying that Audi wouldn’t deliver him a championship contending package until after his peak and he should be going to Mercedes with a spreadsheet showing how he’s equal to Leclerc (the data for which doesn’t exist by the way). If you think he’s all that, then surely you need to hold him to the same standard.
Just some of the many points Ferrari have thrown away for Leclerc in the last few years.
“I would prefer Carlos [over Charles].” - Damon Hill
It’s a good thing that Damon Hill is not a team principal. He clearly wouldn’t be a good one. Imagine explaining to the higher-ups that you had a choice between two teammates and you signed the one that’s behind the other in literally every metric that you can find. It should say a lot that both Toto and Helmut Marko responded to Leclerc’s extension news by saying ‘Why wouldn’t you sign him’ but here we are.
It’s a shame how the times have changed though. Drivers who are incredibly rapid but may have a mistake in them have gone out of fashion a little bit. Drivers like Gilles Villeneuve, Ayrton Senna, and Greg Moore are still absolutely beloved but for whatever reason Leclerc’s raw speed doesn’t evoke that similar emotion. Pundits back then probably wouldn’t dare to run a similar narrative with them but with Leclerc in the modern day, it’s a different story. The wild thing for me is that Sainz isn’t exactly a reliable pair of hands either, the last few years have shown he comes with a lot of mistakes and underperformance as well.
Before I go into the last quotes, it wasn’t just the TV coverage that was unbalanced and unfair. Post-qualifying, Sky dropped a video clip on their website with the headline. ‘’What was Charles Leclerc's biggest mistake? | Ferrari fumble P1 in Bahrain qualifying” Now, am I going to say Leclerc nailed Q3 on Friday? No. I think there was time on the table there. However, I think you could say the same with the vast majority of those in Q3. Perez was 0.350 behind Max, Norris made mistakes, Piastri looked off the pace all session and only looked so close to Norris because Norris didn’t hook up the lap, Hamilton put the car ninth while Russell put it P3, but yet none of them got this sort of headline. By the way, if Leclerc fumbled P1, what did Sainz do in the same car? Does he not deserve the same sort of headline?
“...Lando is actually doing a brilliant job. He’s complaining about all sorts on the car, it’s not driveable, it’s slow etc etc.” - Ted Kravitz
‘’I know Charles Leclerc has had his brake issues, his problems, but Carlos Sainz has really grasped the bull by its horns a little bit” - David Croft
This double whammy is when I tuned out of the coverage. I know this is a British broadcast, and there is going to be bias towards the British drivers, but Lando has non-descript problems (which certainly wasn’t even close to the magnitude of what was happening with Leclerc’s Ferrari or the Mercedes even) and he gets more praise than Leclerc does for having to deal with the car pulling in pretty much every braking zone because one of his front brakes is over a hundred degrees hotter than the other.
As mentioned above, Martin Brundle acknowledges that it is more difficult dealing with the braking issues Leclerc had than the power unit issues the Mercedes’ faced, but at no point does Leclerc get any credit for dealing with it the way he did. Instead, it felt more like Sky wanted to gloss over the issues and wanted to be giddy in excitement in watching Sainz pass him. Rather than rationally look at it as ‘Sainz passed his teammate who was suffering from technical problems’, they’ve looked at it as an opportunity to run an agenda and they couldn’t be happier about it.
Which leads me to ask, why? Why are they pushing this narrative about Leclerc’s maturity, and his thinking ability, and why they would choose to sign Carlos over Charles now? Watching Sky it feels like they are running PR for him, trying to get him into that Mercedes seat and I can’t come up with a reason to save my life for why they’re doing that. What’s even more confusing is pushing it harder than maybe I’ve ever seen it pushed before on a weekend where Leclerc out-qualified Sainz and only finished behind because of external factors. There is nothing really to blame Leclerc for and instead, the way people talk about his weekend they’re acting like he crashed out of qualifying on a pole lap and then bottled the race.
Whatever the reason, it’s sad that, among Abu Dhabi and Silverstone, one of the other things people can’t leave behind in 2021 is the ‘Leclerc is the fast but error-prone driver while Sainz is the consistent safe pair of hands’ narrative. First of all, it’s just crammed into discussions where it’s not even a relevant talking point like it was this weekend by Damon and Naomi. Secondly, it didn’t hold much weight back in 2021 realistically. Thirdly, 2022 and 2023 have happened and shown it’s not a narrative with any truth to it anymore. Leclerc remains the faster driver, and while he still has a mistake in him, Carlos also has big errors in him as well. If Carlos was the reliable hand he was made out to be, he wouldn’t have finished 7th in the championship, behind Leclerc despite far superior luck. His high points made up a fraction of his season, and arguably he only deserved to come away with one podium in 2023. It’s not like we’re Chat GPT which doesn’t have any knowledge of events after 2021, we can update our narratives based on the events of 2022 and 2023.
I know this is just me talking to a brick wall. Unfortunately, Leclerc’s reputation will unfairly continue to take a beating at the hands of Ferrari’s errors. Until they fix up, and I’m very sure they will under Vasseur, people will continue to run out of date or ungrounded in reality narratives to blame him for his misfortune. However, even though this shouldn’t need to happen, I will continue to defend Leclerc’s credentials, and once Ferrari plugs all the holes they leak points through, I’m sure Leclerc will shine and prove a lot of people wrong.
