British former racing driver Martin Brundle, currently working as a commentator for Sky Sports, believes that Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver’s Charles Leclerc retirement in the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya and the big strategy mistakes made by the Maranello team in Monte Carlo last weekend have severely tested the mutual affection between him and Scuderia Ferrari.
Charles Leclerc was on his way to a dominant win in Barcelona, but in the end he lost his lead in the 2022 Formula 1 Drivers’ standings due to a power unit failure that opened the door to Red Bull for an easy win. Monaco seemed like the perfect opportunity to bounce back after the F1-75 car proved extremely competitive on the narrow streets of Monte Carlo, as the Ferrari drivers secured P1 and P2 in qualifying. However, the raced turned out to be another missed chance for the Maranello team, this time due to a huge strategy error by Ferrari, who called Charles in two times in just three laps and sent him to fourth place, after leading the race in the first stint.
Martin Brundle shared his thoughts on the Monaco Grand Prix in his usual post-race Sky Sports F1 column, and weighed in on Charles Leclerc’s unfortunate outcome in front of his home fans:
“You must feel sorry for local boy Charles Leclerc. He aced pole position and comfortably led the race only for strategy to consign him to fourth place,” he added. “Pitting on lap 18 for intermediates, then again three laps later for slicks with a confused radio message meaning he had to wait briefly for his teammate Carlos Sainz to receive his slicks in a double-stacked pit stop. Therefore, he was initially undercut by Perez into second place and then delayed into fourth by the second stop. Unusually during the second red flag for Mick Schumacher’s sizeable crash at the swimming pool he was no doubt able to share his feelings about all this with the team. It was his race to lose, and he didn’t even end up on the podium just to rub salt in his wounds,” the Sky Sport pundit said.
Charles Leclerc was of course extremely disappointed with how events unfolded in Monte Carlo and pointed out that Ferrari cannot afford similar mistakes to be able to continue challenging Red Bull for the world titles, something that Martin Brundle believes may be putting the relationship between him and Scuderia Ferrari to the test.
“The mutual admiration and affection between Leclerc and Ferrari remind me of the relationship Michael Schumacher had with the team,” the former F1 driver revealed, “but that has been severely tested on Leclerc’s side in eight days of two missed glorious victories and wasting the opportunity to regain the lead of the world championship.” – he added.
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Carlo Sainz, the Maranello teammate of Charles Leclerc, also didn’t have an ideal race in Monaco. While the Spaniard was more inspired with his strategy call, his pit stop timing was not correct, as Carlos returned to the track behind Latifi, who was in no rush to let the Ferrari driver pass, which helped Sergio Perez jump ahead in front and take the race win.
Martin Brundle weighed in on Carlos Sainz’s situation, saying: “We don’t hear all the radio messages of course, but it must be said that Sainz in the Ferrari was abundantly clear that he wanted to skip the intermediates and go directly to slick tyres, and this was potentially a smart, confident and winning decision. Sadly for him, exiting the wet pitlane on the hard compound slicks he followed Latifi’s Williams for a dozen corners and lost track position to Perez, who delivered race-winning speed on his intermediate tyres between laps 16 and 21.” – Martin Brundle concluded.
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