Charles Leclerc admitted fault for the five-second time penalty that caused him to fall from fifth to sixth at the Belgian Grand Prix’s conclusion.
This comes after the Ferrari driver stopped in the pit lane at the end of the race to put on a new set of tires and as a result, he was given a penalty for speeding. This was done to give him a chance to earn the additional point for the race’s fastest lap.
“I will not risk it this time… but up to you if you really want to try it, but I would not risk it.” At first, Leclerc declined the call, informing his squad of the late pitstop.
Leclerc was called in by Ferrari, but as he rolled down the pit lane he went 1 kph over the speed limit. Despite being advised he should be a second ahead of Fernando Alonso when he resumed before pitting, he also rejoined so close to the Alpine driver that he was quickly overhauled by the Spaniard.
Leclerc regained the lead but was unable to post the fastest time, failing to do so before being penalized and losing it to Alonso. Leclerc, however, admitted he was at fault for the speeding infraction.
“No, the penalty is my fault… So nothing to do with the team,” Leclerc admitted. “We spoke about it during the race… You heard about the call and in the end we decided to stop… So it’s like this.”
Leclerc’s woes began when he had to pit early in the race so that a visor tear-off stuck on his Ferrari’s brake duct could be fixed, this resulted in lost time.
“This put us quite a bit on the back foot and we’ve paid the price by quite a bit, but it’s like this,” Leclerc said on the issue.
Throughout 2022, Ferrari’s strategy choices have occasionally come under fire. All through the race, they discussed Leclerc’s strategy on the radio in a number of conversations, some of which seemed to go into greater detail than normal about their preferred tyres.
Leclerc claimed that the team had adhered to protocol and avoided running the danger of giving away too much information to competitors.
“I think we’ve always done that… This time we were a bit clearer because we were in a bit in no man’s land and nobody was fighting with us… So we had more freedom to speak about it.”
