‘Ferrari then collapsed’: Jacques Villeneuve questions if Charles Leclerc would have made errors if not for Ferrari’s own problems
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Charles Leclerc
Charles Leclerc did not have a great weekend in Japan. While he gave Max Verstappen a fight to remember in the qualifying session, it was a vastly different story in the race. At the start of the race, Leclerc had a better getaway, but Verstappen soon caught up and surged in front once again. After the race was restarted some hours later, Leclerc once again had to play catch up.
The two ran fairly close for a few laps, until stopping at the same time for new intermediates. Leclerc initially seemed to be able to challenge him, but after a few laps, he started to fall back dramatically. The F1-75 has had issues with the tyre wear for some time, and perhaps here they were most pronounced. Eventually, he finished 26.7 seconds behind the Dutchman. Well, that was until the penalty was applied.
On the final chicane on the last lap (though he did not know it was the last lap), the Monegasque locked up and went over the chicane. He was judged to have kept his position by cutting the chicane, promptly earning him a 5-second penalty, and handing Max Verstappen his ‘inevitable’ championship win. This is not the first time he made an error, and Jacques Villeneuve thinks it has seeped in from Ferrari themselves.
Jacques Villeneuve: ‘Ferrari collapse increased the pressure on Charles Leclerc’
Charles Leclerc is currently 114 points behind Max Verstappen. Not all of it has been through his mistakes, or even from the car being inferior. Rather, it’s been from strategic errors (Monaco, Britain, or even Hungary) from the team or reliability failures (Azerbaijan or Spain). But he cannot claim to be blameless, and he has made 3 costly mistakes.
Leclerc made mistakes at Imola (around 7 points), France (25 to 19 points) and now at Suzuka (3 points). Which adds up to 35 points. The 1997 world champion, Jacques Villeneuve has wondered if these mistakes would happen without the intense Ferrari pressure the Monegasque must be under.
In his column for Formule1.nl, the Canadian wrote: “The championship for Max Verstappen is of course well deserved. With the exception of the first three races, Red Bull has been almost perfect. Ferrari then collapsed, the team went [the] wrong way too often which also increased the pressure on Charles.”
Villeneuve called Leclerc’s self-inflicted crash in France ‘crucial’ for the championship: “He also started to make mistakes and the question will always be, would that have happened without the blunders of the team? His mistake when he took the lead in Paul Ricard was ultimately crucial for the championship.”
As for Red Bull, Jacques Villeneuve thinks they got the perfect ending: Sealing their title in Honda’s home country (after having recently signed a deal with them). He also highlighted the main difference between the RB18 and the F1-75: The former does not eat its tyres as quickly.
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)