Leclerc's "small mistake" leads to Ferrari chassis change

A mistake described as "small" by Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has resulted in a chassis change for Charles Leclerc heading into this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix.

Leclerc was pushing hard with just over 15 minutes of the second practice session at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit remaining when he had a snap of oversteer on the exit of Les Combes.

It resulted in the Monégasque driver bouncing over a kerb onto the grass and into a tyre barrier at Malmedy, damaging the left-hand side of his SF21.

Leclerc later described the incident as "all part of free practice" but it has ultimately led to significant repair work for his crew.

A Ferrari spokesperson declared that Leclerc's chassis "sustained damage that cannot be repaired in a short space of time.

"Therefore, yesterday evening, a spare chassis was built up and Leclerc will use this as from the third free practice session."

Leclerc eventually finished 18th in FP2 and felt far from happy with the car prior to his incident.

After practice, he said: "It felt quite good [in FP1] but in P2 it didn't feel great so we need to understand because we didn't change much on the car.

"So there is plenty to understand and hopefully, we will do a good enough job but I am confident we can do that to understand what went wrong in FP2 to be better."

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