New Charles Leclerc data emerges after George Russell’s ‘close to illegal’ claim

Former Renault F1 driver Jolyon Palmer has analysed data to propose a theory on Charles Leclerc’s pace drop-off in Hungary.

After taking pole position and leading for the first half of the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest, Leclerc’s pace fell off by some two seconds a lap in the final stint, condemning him to a distant fourth place by the chequered flag.

George Russell points to ‘something not right’ for Charles Leclerc

Leclerc had pitted for a second time on Lap 41, taking on a set of hard tyres, before his pace completely disappeared.

This left him vulnerable to the attentions of Mercedes’ George Russell, with the British driver eventually muscling past as a frustrated Leclerc was given a time penalty for being overly aggressive in his defence.

The Monegasque had taken to team radio to voice his annoyance at not being listened to over an undisclosed choice, labelling his car “undriveable,” suggesting Ferrari had changed something on the car without his knowledge. Following the chequered flag, Leclerc rowed back on his words and explained he had found out his car had encountered a chassis issue.

The nature of this issue hasn’t been clarified, with team boss Fred Vasseur not going into further detail as he spoke to the media, including PlanetF1.com, after the race, but he did admit the issue was so severe that Ferrari had initially thought Leclerc wouldn’t finish the race.

Having followed the Ferrari on track, Russell put forward a theory for why Leclerc’s pace had dropped away so severely.

“I saw how slow he was, so I presumed something was not right,” he told Sky F1.

“He’s not going to tell you that they’re close to being illegal.

“The only thing we can think of is they were running the car too low to the ground and they had to increase the tyre pressures for the last stint.”

Lewis Hamilton’s SF-25 was disqualified for excessive plank wear after this year’s Canadian Grand Prix, with the underfloor component found to have less than the regulated 9mm thickness in post-race scrutineering.

In an effort to ensure this wouldn’t happen again, Russell believes Ferrari took steps to mitigate the wear on Leclerc’s car.

“[They] were using an engine mode that was making the engine slower at the end of the straight, which is where you have the most amount of plank wear,” he said.

“That’s the only thing we can think of based upon the lap times and the engine mode they were running and stuff like that.”

More from the Hungarian Grand Prix

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Jolyon Palmer looks at the data to explain Charles Leclerc’s pace drop

Appearing on the official F1 channel for a post-race debrief, presenter and former Renault F1 driver Jolyon Palmer explored the telemetry data from Leclerc and Russell, and theorised what could have caused the Ferrari driver’s problems.

“What could it possibly be for Leclerc, who said afterwards it was a chassis issue?” Palmer said.

“So we’re thinking it’s not anything to do with the power unit by that, and there are really three possibilities for this – one is some damage that he picked up, that we didn’t see, over a kerb, and possibly just damaging the floor of the car suddenly, and it coincided with the pit stop.

“Another one is that they made a front wing adjustment at the pit stop, which they did do, and got that wrong and induced loads of oversteer, perhaps, and Charles couldn’t dial it back with some of his cockpit settings.

“The final one is one that Mercedes picked out pretty quickly as the race was going on, which is whether Ferrari was on the absolute cusp of legality?

“So they therefore had to crank in and add a load of tyre pressure to raise the floor of the car and not get done for too much plank wear, which is what they had in China, and it’s what they had in Austin [2023] with Charles Leclerc a couple of years ago.

“To me, that seems the most plausible, and the data is here. So first of all, the obvious – stint analysis, Russell versus Leclerc. First stint, clear air, Leclerc was quicker.

“Second stint, it’s pretty close, but overall, Leclerc still has an advantage in that stint, and they’re both in clear air.

“The final stint shows how horrific this suddenly got for Charles and why he dropped not only out of victory contention, but off the podium. He’s actually not miles away from being caught by Fernando Alonso if the race were another 10 laps, which is baffling for a guy who was checking out at the start of the race from the Aston Martin.”

While Leclerc had shown an overall strong pace by way of good cornering speeds, his straight-line speed had been down on Russell’s throughout, but this cornering advantage disappeared in the final stint as Palmer picked through key points of the race.

“Plank wear happens at high speed. It happens when you’ve got most downforce on the car. And that is the end of straights,” he said.

“As the downforce is picking up, you squash the car down to the asphalt, and you’re most likely to have plank wear as the car is skipping along the road.

“What you can see on Lap 13 is that Leclerc has no more acceleration towards the end of the straight. He’s not even picking eighth gear, and it’s the same up towards Turn 4 as well.

“So, on these longer straights, he’s actually just not able to use energy deployment at the end of the straights. Leclerc suddenly did not have deployment for the end part of the straights.

“On Lap 35, once again, you can see the Ferrari is missing the top speed of the Mercedes. So once again, it’s energy deployment. They’re both in clear air. There’s no traffic, there’s no slipstream. The Ferrari is not deploying energy at the end of the straight, and it’s costing Leclerc a little bit of lap time.

“It’s about a tenth of a second into Turn 1, a little bit more heading up towards Turn 4, where Ferrari may have thought this is where you’re most likely to do damage to the plank and grind it along the ground.

“On Lap 48, the final stint, Russell is now catching Leclerc. First thing, the Ferrari deployment is the same, so they’re still missing speed, and Leclerc is still not taking eighth gear down the main straight, and they’re also missing speed up towards Turn 4.

“Ferrari is not using full energy deployment on the straight. They’re in a different mode, and it means they’re not hitting the same top speed, which is going to make Leclerc’s life pretty difficult when it comes to defending as well.

“Only, this time, he’s now got no pace through the corners either. So the power unit that has been the same through the race has been okay, because they’ve had track position, and he’s been quick through the corners. In the final stint, the cornering speed completely goes for Leclerc, and we can see that with a load of oversteer.

“It could be that Ferrari cracked on a load of front wing, but they don’t believe they did. So then it could be that they picked up damage at this part of the race, and that’s why it’s just now missing a load of downforce from the floor of the car.”

Palmer affirmed that he believes Leclerc’s pace collapse could well be down to tyre pressures, despite the protestations of it being related to a chassis issue, explaining that the data does corroborate the theory.

“The only thing you can change in the pit stop, from a team perspective, is front wing angle, which they did change, or tyre pressures,” he said.

“Now, normally, you’d never change the tyre pressures, because you run them as low as possible, because they sort of deflate, so you have more of the tyre in contact with the asphalt, and therefore you get more grip.

“Pirelli mandates that you have to run to a minimum tyre pressure, and that is basically what everyone does. You can’t go lower than that because it would be illegal, and Pirelli doesn’t want it to go lower because it would maybe lose structural rigidity.

“So it’s for safety, you have to run at the Pirelli minimum. No one would go higher than that, because you’d lose grip.

“But if you did go higher than that, you would also raise the ride height of the car by bulging out the tyre a little bit more, lifting the floor of the car off the ground, and that would mean that you’re legal.

“You’re able to run the car at a higher ride height, suddenly, for the final stint of the race, but it would make you really slow, because you’re just getting less grip from the tyre.

“To me, that is what this data looks like. I can see why Mercedes looked at this and thought it’s the only thing that makes sense; possibly, it’s some damage in there as well.

“I’m sure Ferrari will will know the answer to this already, but I can see the logic here for Ferrari, who have been in trouble with plank wear in the past, going really aggressive with it, finding out after qualifying they’re maybe too aggressive, and having to really nurse this through the final stint at the race, maybe hoping it’s difficult to overtake in Budapest, and they cling on for what they’ve already had earlier on in the race.

“However, the pace was just too slow, and for poor Leclerc, he was defenceless and couldn’t even stand on the podium.”

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