Ferrari and Red Bull have rejected labelling Charles Leclerc as a ‘crasher’ following his mistake at the French Grand Prix.
The Monegasque spun off into the barrier while leading the race at Paul Ricard shortly after Max Verstappen, with whom he was battling, had pitted for tyres.
The incident marked the third time Leclerc had retired from P1 this season, although the other two occasions were caused by unreliability.
However, Charles did spin out at Imola earlier in the year, costing him a likely podium, and there have been other errors at key moments during his time at Ferrari.
LAP 54/53
Leclerc has gone into the barriers at the chicane!
He’s got going again, returns to the pits and then out again on track but down in P9 #ImolaGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/242hWCCR8h
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 24, 2022
“I think it’s a bit of an unfair judgement,” team boss Mattia Binotto replied when asked if Leclerc was a “crasher”.
“I think he was driving certainly at the limit. There are things that may happen when you’re driving to the limit.
“Why it happened, is there anything else? We will take our time with him to discuss and to judge, but at the moment there is no reason to blame him.
“I’m pretty sure he will learn. We have always seen that Charles is reacting very strongly and well when he’s doing mistakes. And I’m pretty sure that he will be back in Hungary stronger and hungry.”
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That sentiment was shared by Red Bull chief Christian Horner when the same question was put to him.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t know whether anything else contributed to his accident. He’s a very strong driver.
“I mean, these two guys (Leclerc and Verstappen), they are operating and pushing each other so hard. And these cars are right on the edge in these conditions.
“His bad luck was our good luck today and it’s swung around during the course of the year.”
As for Leclerc himself, he admitted such mistakes had to be erased if he has any F1 championship aspirations going forward.
“I feel like I’m performing at the highest level of my career since the beginning of the season, but there’s no point in performing at a high level if I do those mistakes,” he stated.
“I’ve lost 32 points lost overall – 25 here as it was likely we were going to win because we were fast – and seven in Imola because of my mistake.
“So at the end of the year we will count back and if there are 32 points missing then I know it’s come from me and I know I did not deserve to win the championship.
“For the second half of the season, I know I need to get on top of things if I want to be a world champion.”