“We can win with Lewis”: Why Leclerc abandoned his late gamble on soft tyres | Formula 1

The Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix was the latest chapter in a long series of frustrating afternoons on the radio for Charles Leclerc.

An aggressively early tyre change failed to pay off as a Virtual Safety Car period handed many of his rivals the chance to make low-cost pit stops.

When the race was neutralised a second time Leclerc decided to make a bold tyre change. He was set to come in but changed his mind at the last second.

He therefore faced a joyless end to the race as he came under attack from Alexander Albon. Leclerc was infuriated by Ferrari’s instruction to let the Williams driver through on the final lap as they faced the threat of a penalty.

Leclerc’s key Emilia-Romagna GP radio

“You’re saying ‘traffic’ when there’s nobody”
“I don’t care, we are speaking about ourselves”
“We can win the race with Lewis”
“How many cars behind me have new tyres?”
“Looks like restarting it will be fine”
“Tell him to give me the DRS if he can”
“What did I do wrong?”

“You’re saying ‘traffic’ when there’s nobody”

The VSC period caused by Esteban Ocon’s left Leclerc with no good strategy options as his race engineer Bryan Bozzi explained:

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“I don’t care, we are speaking about ourselves”

By the time the race was neutralised a second time, Leclerc had taken most of the life out of his second set of hard tyres. As soon as he saw the Safety Car was coming out he made it clear to his team he wanted to change tyres.

Leclerc was running 1.8 behind his team mate Lewis Hamilton when the Safety Car came out. This meant Leclerc was likely to lose time if he followed Hamilton into the pits. Bozzi told him Hamilton was not planning to pit.

With all his medium and hard tyres now well-used, Leclerc chose to switch to new a set of soft tyres. No one else ran this compound during the race and few expected it would last long. However as he approached the pit lane entrance Leclerc was committed to taking them:

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“We can win the race with Lewis”

Leclerc appeared surprised when Hamilton did come in. He appeared to stay out because Hamilton came in, concerned that queueing behind him in the pit box would cost him more places:

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“How many cars behind me have new tyres?”

Had Leclerc switched to the soft tyres he would have enjoyed a temporary performance advantage before suffering heavy degradation. As the Safety Car remained on-track for an unexpectedly long time, the eventual restart came much later in the race, which might have made the gamble more worthwhile.

Instead, Leclerc was concerned about the prospect restart the race on his old hard tyres. He repeatedly asked Bozzi which drivers behind him had the benefit of fresh rubber, clearly dissatisfied with his engineer’s initial replies:

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“Looks like restarting it will be fine”

Bozzi reassured Leclerc that his hard tyre would come back to life at the restart.

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“Tell him to give me the DRS if he can”

Leclerc managed to repel Albon to begin with, then when the Williams driver got alongside him into Tamburello, Leclerc forced him off. Hamilton now appeared behind him and Leclerc allowed his team mate through.

He asked Ferrari hopefully whether Hamilton might hold back to give him the benefit of DRS to help him out-run Albon. But Hamilton had Oscar Piastri in his sights and, besides which, Ferrari likely suspected Leclerc was at risk of a penalty for the way he dealt with Albon:

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“What did I do wrong?”

Sure enough, as the stewards flagged the incident between Leclerc and Albon, Ferrari decided he should hand the place back. Had he not done so, and the stewards had decided he was at fault, he would likely have received a five-second time penalty and fallen to around eighth place instead of sixth.

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