Charles Leclerc has conceded that his retirement from the Monaco Grand Prix \u201cstill hurts\u201d, but acknowledged that he has also \u201cgot to look forward\u201d as he shared an update on the brakes issue that he spoke about following his sudden DNF.<\/p>\n
Leclerc<\/a> had been running in the final podium position at his home event when \u2013 following a restart after a late-race Safety Car \u2013 his Ferrari<\/a> went straight on at the final corner and into the barriers, putting him out of the race.<\/p>\n The 28-year-old could not hide his disappointment in the aftermath, stating that he was \u201cextremely disappointed, sad, angry\u201d<\/a> as he shed light on the brakes problems he had been experiencing.<\/p>\n \u201cI cannot do anything,\u201d the Monegasque explained afterwards. \u201cThe only thing I can do is not brake for the last corner, but in an F1 corner not braking in the last corner ends up in the wall anyway. I put the least amount of brakes I could possibly do, and it\u2019s not even braking, it\u2019s leaning my foot on the brake.\u201d<\/p>\n Just a few days on, Leclerc was quizzed by the media ahead of the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix<\/a> on what the debrief was like after his exit in Monaco \u2013 and whether there would be a brakes fix in place this weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to go into too much detail,\u201d he responded. \u201cIt\u2019s not so different from what I had said right after. Now we focus forward, and we\u2019ll try to maximise this weekend and hopefully get back on the podium and get some good points.<\/p>\n \u201cMonaco hurts, but it\u2019s the way it is now. I cannot change that anymore and I\u2019ve got to look forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Leclerc was also asked about what kind of insight he could share into the situation with the brakes, with the eight-time race winner answering: \u201cNot a lot, to be completely honest.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll do what we think is best on our side and try to maximise whatever we can do \u2013 that\u2019s my job as a driver and our job as a team. We\u2019ll continue to push. It still hurts, Monaco. I\u2019m pretty good normally at moving on, but I think this one hurts because it\u2019s also home.<\/p>\n \u201cNow I’m just looking forward to being back on track tomorrow and driving again. That\u2019s the best way to forget about what happened last weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n Leclerc also said on the topic of the brakes: \u201cThe last two weekends have been very tough for me. Overall, I think going forward we\u2019ll change slightly the configuration of how we run our brakes.<\/p>\n \u201cTo go more into the detail is tricky for me. We\u2019ll see \u2013 I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be a revolution, but in certain times of the race I will expect a change.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking ahead to the weekend at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the Ferrari driver suggested that he was keen not to place too much expectation on the event.<\/p>\n \u201cI think realistically Mercedes<\/a> still remain the benchmark,\u201d he reflected. \u201cI think Mercedes will still be extremely strong. Red Bull<\/a> were strong in Monaco, so it\u2019s not like we are the only ones making progress.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure that other teams are also pushing in order to do just that. I don\u2019t have much expectation for this weekend, just because I don\u2019t want to have any. The best thing we can do is focus on ourselves and try to maximise everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc has conceded that his retirement from the Monaco Grand Prix \u201cstill hurts\u201d, but acknowledged that he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-730321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}