Charles Leclerc believes neither himself nor Lewis Hamilton were to blame for their collision at the start of the Chinese Grand Prix.
However, Leclerc believes that Ferrari will need to be prepared for more clashes between their drivers before the season is done.
Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc: More collisions to come?
With Hamilton running P4 and Leclerc P5 going into the first trip of the race through Turn 2 and 3, Leclerc would clip Hamilton’s sister Ferrari and lost a front wing endplate in the process, the team estimating that to have been “20 to 30 points” of downforce out the window.
While Leclerc nonetheless had the pace advantage over Hamilton for much of the race from there, he believes he felt the effects of that damage, and some further skirmishes could lay ahead for the Ferrari drivers.
“Honestly, it’s not Lewis’s fault, at all,” Leclerc told Sky F1.
“And on my side, I was just around the inside, trying to position the car for Turn 3, and Lewis didn’t know I was there. I did not expect Lewis to come back taking the apex at the moment he was on the outside.
“Again, it’s a racing incident. This is not the first and last time it will happen.
“It’s a shame that it happened between the two red cars, but obviously there was no bad intentions for either of us. So that was unfortunate, and obviously that cost me quite a bit for the rest of the race.”
Leclerc would not change the damaged front wing, so asked if he wanted to, he replied: “Of course. We are speaking about a big, big loss on my car, so there was for sure, the potential to do a lot better.
“We didn’t want to take the eight seconds at the pit stop of changing a front wing, because then I would have needed to overtake cars.
“And we were very weak in Turn 12, so that was making us very vulnerable with the cars behind, and it was very, very difficult to make any overtakes because on the way up to Turn 14, we were just too far off.
“So I didn’t want to take that risk. I just wanted to keep track position by then and try to maximise the result. I think we did well, yeah, shame, obviously, for the damage.”
And with Leclerc going strong despite that front wing damage, while Hamilton’s pace tailed off, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said this was a “difficult” scenario to read which played out.
It was a tough day today,” he admitted, speaking to Sky F1.
“Very strange because on one side of the garage, the damage on the front wing, the pace that we had, I think it’s encouraging, and it was a good one. Was much more difficult for Lewis.
“He had a very, very good day of management yesterday, and we are struggling much more with the pace today.
“Difficult to understand and to read.
“But we can also take the positive with the race of Charles and the pace that he had.”
Put to him that Hamilton’s Sprint race-winning pace vanishing must have been tyre related, Vasseur responded: “I don’t want to finger point someone or to blame something.
“But we have to do a better job also and we’ll have to understand.
“We all have the same tyres, but it’s always on the edge. And we saw, even during the race, that sometimes Max [Verstappen] was struggling and then coming back and then struggling. As soon as you are not in the right window, it’s much more difficult.”
Leclerc would cross the line P5 after being overtaken by Red Bull’s Verstappen, with Hamilton taking P6, but disaster struck with both Ferrari drivers later disqualified.
For Leclerc, it was due to his Ferrari SF-25 being found underweight in the standard FIA post-race checks, while the underfloor plank on Hamilton’s Ferrari had exceeded the maximum permitted wear.
