Ferrari star rolls back controversial team criticism

Charles Leclerc has walked back his furious criticism of his Ferrari team after gaining some perspective on last weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix.

The Monegasque star's weekend started well, when he took a brilliant pole position on Saturday to stun the McLaren pair of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

But that proved to be as good as it would get for Leclerc, who finished down in fourth on Sunday afternoon.

The 27-year-old was evidently furious throughout the race, with team bearing the brunt of his anger over team radio.

"I can feel what we discussed before the race," he said. "We need to discuss those things before doing them. We are going to lose this race with these things. We are losing so much time."

Later, he added: "This is so incredibly frustrating. We've lost all competitiveness. You just have to listen to me, I would have found a different way of managing those issues. Now it's just undriveable. Undriveable. It's a miracle if we finish on the podium."

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Leclerc backtracks on Ferrari criticism

But speaking after the chequered flag, Leclerc admitted his comments were made without having full knowledge of a major issue which had been hampering his performance.

“First of all, I need to take back the words I've said in the radio because I thought that it was coming from one thing, but then I got a lot more detail since I got out of the car," Leclerc told media.

"It was actually an issue coming from the chassis and nothing that we could have done differently.

"I started to feel the issue in Lap 40 or something like that, and then it got worse, laps after laps after laps, and towards the end we were two seconds off the pace, and the car was just undriveable."

The result capped a disappointing first stint of the campaign ahead of the summer break, with Leclerc failing to secure a race victory.

He currently occupies fifth spot in the championship standings, one place ahead of team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who endured a shocking few days on the outskirts of Budapest.

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