French Grand Prix: Charles Leclerc has 'steep mountain' to climb after latest mistake
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Charles Leclerc has converted only two of seven pole positions into victory this year
"If I keep doing mistakes like this, then I deserve to not win the championship."
Charles Leclerc was brutal in his assessment of the mistake that meant he crashed out of the lead of the French Grand Prix, but then he had reason to be.
The race was far from won at that point. The Ferrari driver's title rival Max Verstappen had just pitted for fresh tyres. Leclerc was going to stay out for a few more laps. He would have rejoined behind the Red Bull but with fresher tyres, and the question would have been whether he could have overtaken to reclaim the lead.
But he never got to find out, and the error handed an easy win to Verstappen - his seventh in 12 races - and, more to the point, a colossal 63-point championship lead.
With 10 races to go, 25 points for a victory, a seven-point difference between first and second place and Ferrari not exactly having the smoothest of seasons, one does not have to be a mathematician to see just how steep a mountain Leclerc has to climb now.
"I am performing at the highest level of my career," a downcast Leclerc said. "But if I keep doing those mistakes it is pointless.
"I am giving away too many points. Seven in Imola; 25 here because we were probably the strongest car on track.
"So if we lose the championship by 32 points at the end of the year, I will know where they are coming from and it is unacceptable."
Does Leclerc make too many mistakes?
Right now, despite Leclerc's seven pole positions, this just does not look like it is going to be Ferrari's year.
After three races, he led Verstappen by 46 points, thanks to two wins and a second place, and two retirements for the world champion. And it looked like the title was Leclerc's and Ferrari's to lose.
But then it all started to go wrong.
Leclerc spun in the closing stages of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix trying to pass Verstappen's team-mate Sergio Perez for second place, and turned a third place into sixth. But until France, the fault had nearly all been the team's.
Twice Leclerc's engine failed while he was leading - in Spain and Azerbaijan, which led to a start from the back in Canada because of grid penalties for using too many engine parts.
Twice, the team's strategists contrived to turn a certain Leclerc victory into a fourth place with bungled decision-making - in Monaco and at Silverstone.
Leclerc looked to have begun to get his season back on track with a convincing victory in Austria two weeks ago - where, as in France, Verstappen pitted first, leaving Leclerc to catch and re-pass him. Which he did. Three times.
But now Leclerc has dropped his own clanger, and in doing so he has revived the old assessments of him, that he was an extravagantly talented and brilliantly fast driver, but a bit too prone to mistakes.
A glance back through his Ferrari career underlines how he earned that reputation.
Charles Leclerc shows his frustration after a crash in qualifying during the 2019 Azerbaijan Grand Prix
There was the crash in qualifying in Baku in 2019, when he should have taken pole.
In 2020, he cannoned into team-mate Sebastian Vettel on the first lap in Austria; crashed heavily out of the Italian Grand Prix when pushing hard after a pit stop; made an error braking too late at the last corner in the wet in Turkey, and turned second place into fourth, after what until then had been one of the drives of his career; and retired in a collision with Sergio Perez on the first lap in Bahrain.
And then last year he crashed in final qualifying at Monaco. It secured him pole position by ending the session, but Ferrari did not spot that he had damaged a driveshaft hub, and the car broke down on the way to the grid.
After the race on Sunday, team principal Mattia Binotto defended the driver who in the winter of 2019-20, after a brilliant first season for Ferrari, he signed to a five-year deal.
"It is a bit of an unfair judgement," he said, when asked what he thought of claims Leclerc made too many mistakes. "He was driving at the limit. It is the sort of thing that may happen when you are driving at the limit.
"We will take our time to discuss with him and to judge why it happened. There is no reason to blame him. We have always seen Charles reacts very strongly when he does mistakes and I am pretty sure he will be back in Hungary stronger (next weekend)."
Leclerc, though, is not just any driver. He might even be the out-and-out fastest in F1. And he is fighting at a rarefied level against drivers such as Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, from whom mistakes are considerably rarer.
As he put it himself: "I have to get on top of those things."
Binotto said: "What I said to Charles was that things are more complicated but not impossible and we will enjoy it more if we can turn it into a victory at the end.
"We need to stay focused on every single race. If I look back at all the races, we had always a great potential. They didn't turn into the best results in terms of championship and results but there is no reason why in the next races that cannot happen. The potential is there. The drivers are fantastic. So I am pretty positive.
"There is no reason why we cannot win 10 races from now to the end. Could something happen to Max and Red Bull? It already did, as it happened to us. We need to focus on ourselves and do our best."
"In a week's time, we have Hungary. Important to turn the page and look forward. It will be hot and again about tyre management and overheating. So there is plenty of reason to smile. Our objective should not be winning but a one-two."
'We are not the disaster people think we are'
Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz believes the team are subjected to more criticism than their rivals
After the race, there were questions again about Ferrari's race management, this time focused on the second car of Carlos Sainz, who started from the back of the grid as a result of a grid penalty following his engine failure in Austria.
There was a slow pit stop, and an unsafe release, which earned a five-second penalty. Then, as he fought to pass Red Bull's Perez for third place in the final third of the race, Sainz and his engineer debated whether to pit again.
He said they needed to decide quickly. They called him when he was in the middle of trying to pass Perez, which he did, and he said he would prefer to stay out. They called him in anyway. But now there were only 11 laps to go, and third place was gone. The stop dropped him to eighth, and he recovered to fifth at the end, with a point for fastest lap.
Rival teams were bemused by Ferrari's decision-making.
They should have called him earlier, they said, with about 18 laps to go, which would have given Sainz a chance to catch back up to the third-placed car and potentially pass it. Either that, or once they had got to where they were, stay out, even if it would have been asking a lot of the old medium tyres Sainz was on at the time.
But Binotto insisted it was "the proper and right" call, saying they were trying to extend the stint, but realised the tyres would not make it.
And Sainz said: "The team is doing a very good job on strategy this year. I believe at Ferrari we get super-criticised for things other teams might be going through also and every time there is a tricky moment we are discussing things, but we are not a disaster like people seem to say that we are.
"We like to discuss things. Yes, I was in the middle of an overtake but the team believed it was the right lap to stop. I believed maybe it was worth the risk to stay out and see what happens. But I had just made it to P3 and I saw a podium position.
"I thought I could have finished on the podium if I could make the tyres last, but the team has a lot more data and I am 100% convinced they did that decision with the best intentions and spirit.
"We need to keep progressing and see how we can do better but I am convinced the team is doing a good job there."
Verstappen playing down title talk
Max Verstappen has now won 27 grands prix
Serenely clear of all this, Verstappen continues to drive like the champion he is, with a patience that reflects his points advantage and a maturity that makes him a formidable competitor.
The Red Bull lacks a little in qualifying, and may also not be the fastest car in the race after upgrades to the Ferrari in the past two grands prix - although it is hard to be definitive about that.
But while Ferrari continue to shoot themselves in the foot, Verstappen looks impregnable, unbreakable, and he can afford to be magnanimous in victory.
"These mistakes are easily made," he said of Leclerc's afternoon. "I feel sorry for him, of course. It is not nice and he knows that, but we have still a lot of races to go and there will be a few tough races for us as well.
"We are halfway only. There are a lot races to go and a lot things can happen. I don't really look at that lead.
"We still have a lot of work to do. We are still behind over one lap. I don't expect Hungary to be our best track because I do think we are lacking a bit of downforce compared to Ferrari and that's what you need around there. We will face a few tough weekends as well."
A two-three, but Mercedes still a long way off
Mercedes' consistency this season has taken them within 44 points of Ferrari in the constructors' championship, despite Lewis Hamilton's second place on Sunday being their only top-two finish so far in 2022
Ferrari's misfortune was to Mercedes' advantage. The world champions expected to be able to compete at the front at Paul Ricard, but the car was nearly a second off the pace in qualifying, and they admitted they did not know why.
Both Hamilton and team-mate George Russell drove superbly to beat Perez to the podium.
Hamilton's second place was Mercedes' best result of the year, and his fourth podium finish in a row. And now Mercedes, despite their performance shortfall, are just 44 points behind Ferrari in the constructors' championship.
But Hamilton and Mercedes know that a win is still a way off. Team boss Toto Wolff said the car was "not good enough"; Hamilton that Red Bull and Ferrari are "so fast".
The next race is at a track where Hamilton has won eight times, and, as he was reminded a number of times over the weekend, was also where he returned to winning ways back in 2009, after a poor start to the season with an uncompetitive McLaren.
Hamilton described the start of this season with Mercedes as "very, very similar" to 2009.
But he added: "It's impressive to see a group of people just continuously not giving up, what you see within these teams. I think we haven't made that big step that we made in 2009 to enable us perhaps to win in Budapest but who knows?
"We're not giving up, we're staying pedal to the metal. It's a hot race there. Maybe our car will be good. Maybe we can be closer to these guys. I hope so, so much, because I love that track. So I hope the car feels good there."
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