The 2026 Monaco Grand Prix turned into a nightmare for Charles Leclerc, forced to retire after a crash during the race. The Ferrari driver exploded on the radio and blamed his brakes.
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Charles Leclerc saw his Monaco Grand Prix come to an abrupt end after going off track into the barriers, just a few laps after Lance Stroll’s accident. The Ferrari driver lost control in a similar area, in an already extremely tense context.
This new retirement comes as the race had been completely disrupted by several neutralizations and safety car interventions. For the Monegasque, all hope of a home result vanished in a few moments.
Growing frustration and contested strategy at Ferrari
Even before his crash, Leclerc was already showing signs of annoyance regarding Ferrari’s race management. The Italian team had decided to bring him in behind Lewis Hamilton, despite the latter being under threat of a five-second penalty.
A difficult decision for the Monegasque driver to accept, in a race where every position counts enormously. This strategic choice contributed to increasing the tension in his cockpit long before his retirement.
Lance Stroll’s incident led to a safety car, significantly slowing the pace of the event. Leclerc had already indicated that the restart would be complicated, citing a lack of confidence in these particular conditions.
An explosion of anger on the radio
Moments after the restart, he finally made a mistake in the last sector, in circumstances very similar to those of the Aston Martin driver.
Immediately after his retirement, Charles Leclerc did not hold back his frustration and reacted immediately on the radio, refusing to take responsibility for the incident: “Honestly, I’m not even going to take the fucking responsibility for this!”
Following that, he directly targeted the behavior of his car: “These fucking brakes!”
The Monegasque has been mentioning persistent problems in this area for several races, which he considers particularly debilitating.
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Braking problems confirmed by Leclerc
After the race, Leclerc confirmed to Canal+ that his difficulties indeed stemmed from the braking system and not the track conditions. He specifically explained that asphalt degradation was not the cause of his accident.
“I had seen the asphalt a few laps before, I went a bit wide and there was little grip but that wasn’t the problem. I got confirmation via the data.”
“I am the first not to make excuses for myself and I am the first not to be ashamed to say when I’ve been stupid, but I’m speechless right now. I don’t want to talk because I’m afraid of being too harsh, but this is unacceptable.”
Leclerc insists on a deep and recurring problem: “The brake problems I’ve had in the last two weekends, it’s undriveable. I can’t touch the brakes, the rear brakes don’t work at all, it’s been like this for two weekends. And with cold tires, you have to be more precise.”
A difficult but accepted situation at Ferrari
The Ferrari driver also specified that some solutions had been tested within the team, without guarantee of immediate results. However, he refuses to blame everything on strategy.
“It’s not that I don’t have control, it’s that it’s impossible to have it. The brakes are on/off and that’s been my problem for two races. Again, we have a solution, Lewis went in that direction three or four races ago, I don’t think it made a big difference today but it’s unfortunate.”
Regarding the race strategy, he does not wish to create controversy: “The tires were pretty good, I hadn’t attacked and I had hoped to stay with this set of tires. I didn’t want to get penalized behind Lewis because you can’t slow down in the pit lane, and I had to because I was close to Lewis.”
“But that’s a detail after the hell I went through in Montreal and here, it will change in Barcelona and I hope to regain the feeling with the car. Today I am frustrated, annoyed and sad because I am at home, but it’s not anger against myself, it’s difficult” he concludes.
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