Leclerc says Ferrari double flop 'hurts'

The 26-year-old claims 'engine issue cost us everything’

MONTREAL:

Two weeks after his emotional triumph for Ferrari at his home Monaco Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc on Sunday refused to blame his team after both he and Carlos Sainz failed to finish the Canadian Grand Prix.

He said a problem with his car's power unit had wrecked his hopes of a strong race despite starting from 11th on the grid, one place ahead of Sainz, as the team experienced their first failure to reach Q3 since 2021.

"Honestly, there's not much more to say apart from the engine issue cost us everything," he said. "At one point, we decided we tried to go on the slicks - we had to try something because with our engine issues we would have been out of the points anyway.

"That was it really. We were losing a second and a half on the first straight, so we've got to look into the engine issue because it's going to be tricky for the rest of the season."

He said he wanted to avoid any over-reactions.

"As much as we didn't overreact after Monaco, we shouldn't over-react after this one, but this one hurts.

"It's big points for the team with the two cars DNF'd that we are going to lose against our competitors. And yeah, engine-wise, it's something that we need to look at.

"Yesterday, we missed Q3 by three hundredths of a second. We were definitely not feeling good with the car and we've got to work on that and try to understand what went wrong."