Charles Leclerc made ‘very cryptic’ comment about Ferrari brakes before Barcelona Grand Prix crash

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Charles Leclerc’s crash at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix may reignite the debate over his brakes at Ferrari.

Leclerc lost control of his Ferrari car at turn four at the start of Q3, slamming into the barriers and bringing out the red flags. He will start Sunday’s race from 10th.

It’s his second session-ending crash in as many weekends after he found the wall at the safety car restart during last weekend’s Monaco GP.

Charles Leclerc brake debate will continue after Barcelona crash

After that accident in Monaco, Leclerc said he would go in the same direction as teammate Lewis Hamilton with his Ferrari brakes.

Rumours suggest Hamilton has been using Carbon Industrie brake discs since the Japanese GP, while Leclerc had stuck with the Brembo material. The British driver has confirmed that he had made a change at Suzuka without going into detail.

What would Lewis Hamilton beating Charles Leclerc at 41 do for his F1 legacy?

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Leclerc described his brake problems in Monaco as ‘borderline dangerous’, prompting Brembo to release a statement suggesting his judgement was premature.

Ferrari’s investigation found that Leclerc’s Monaco crash was down to brake temperature, rather than an outright failure.

“Very cryptic how he spoke,” Guenther Steiner said of his post-race comments on last week’s Red Flags podcast, “and obviously it didn’t go down well with Brembo because they came out with a statement, which they normally don’t do.

“Why would they get involved? They’re a supplier, they get told what they need to do.

“Very, very weird the whole situation. We get a clue about it, but the real reason [for the crash]… I don’t understand why Charles didn’t just say it.”

Lewis Hamilton immediately raised braking theory about Charles Leclerc crash

Intriguingly, Hamilton suggested that Leclerc may have worked the brakes too hard at turn four before the Ferrari snapped.

“Charles has been quick all weekend,” he said, via BBC Sport. “I was braking very late into turn four, which had been visible, and I think Charles probably tried to carry a lot of speed into that corner and, unfortunately, it didn’t work out for him.”

Leclerc agreed that turn four was the ‘weak corner’ for him relative to his teammate (via F1), but says he actually released the brakes earlier and paid the price for carrying too much speed, which left him on the dirty, less grippy part of the track.

Leclerc’s onboard footage corroborates that explanation, but the location of the crash was unusual nonetheless. This weekend has been a prolonged experiment for the Ferrari driver, who had shown pace before making another error at a decisive moment.