Charles Leclerc clarifies his team radio complaint: “I thought the issues were due to the front wing change”. Charles Leclerc clarifies his frustrated team radio during the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix.

The Monegasque Formula 1 driver Charles Leclerc retracted and clarified the message he sent to his team via radio during the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix, shedding light on what initially seemed like a confusing and frustrated complaint in the heat of the race.

A tense and puzzling team radio moment
During the race at the Hungaroring, Charles Leclerc found himself rapidly losing positions on track. After being overtaken with apparent ease by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, Leclerc soon realized that George Russell was about to pass him as well. This triggered a series of sharp comments over the team radio. Leclerc said: “It’s incredibly frustrating! We have lost all our competitiveness. You should have listened to me, I would have found a way to manage those problems. Now it’s simply impossible to drive the car, finishing on the podium would be a miracle.”

At the time, these words raised some eyebrows because they sounded both urgent and somewhat unclear, especially given the fact that after the race, Leclerc himself revealed that the Ferrari SF-25 was suffering from a specific technical issue related to the chassis. This issue involved excessive wear of the plank — the wooden or composite board underneath the car that is crucial for maintaining the car’s aerodynamic balance and compliance with ride height regulations. The excessive plank wear led to increased pressure on the Hard compound tires as the team tried to compensate, which further complicated tire management during the race.

Leclerc’s retraction and explanation
After the race, Charles Leclerc acknowledged the confusion and felt the need to clarify his earlier team radio message. He said: “First of all, I need to retract what I said on the radio. Initially, I believed the problems were caused by a particular factor, but after I got out of the car and received more detailed feedback from the engineers, I understood the situation better.”

The Monegasque driver explained that the problem he was experiencing was somewhat unusual and not immediately obvious from the data the team was monitoring in real time. “Apparently, it wasn’t clearly visible in the telemetry or sensor data during the race, but now we can confirm that the issue was indeed there,” Charles Leclerc said. “It was a bit complicated to detect because otherwise, I would have been informed earlier by the team.”

What was Charles Leclerc referring to in his frustrated radio message?
Leclerc revealed that when he first felt the handling difficulties, he was unsure of their exact origin. “When I started to notice these problems on track, I really didn’t know what was causing them,” he said. “At first, I thought they were related to an overly aggressive adjustment we made to the front wing during my pit stop. We had altered the wing to try and gain more front-end grip, but it seems that this wasn’t the actual root cause of the issues I was facing.”

In summary, Charles Leclerc’s initially tense team radio message was a reflection of his on-track struggles to understand and cope with sudden and unusual performance issues. Later analysis and communication with his engineers revealed that the real culprit was the excessive wear on the plank, which had a knock-on effect on tire pressures and overall car balance, particularly making the Hard tires harder to manage. This clarification helps explain why the frustration expressed mid-race was based on incomplete information and why Leclerc felt the need to retract his earlier statements once he had the full picture.