Gary Anderson rejects George Russell’s ‘wacky’ Charles Leclerc theory after Hungarian Grand Prix problem

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Ferrari suffered a difficult race in Hungary after Charles Leclerc was forced to finish outside of the top three places despite leading for most of the 70-lap race.

Leclerc took a shock pole position in his Ferrari during qualifying after McLaren looked unbeatable, and in the race he was briefly able to respond to Oscar Piastri’s challenge at the start.

But as the race progressed, Ferrari’s issues started to unravel, with Leclerc forced to reduce his pace at the end of the race while the team managed an issue on his car.

Having failed to catch up to Lando Norris, who led the race after converting to a one-stop strategy, Leclerc would fall behind Piastri and later George Russell.

Russell suspected that Ferrari were playing around with the tyre pressures in Leclerc’s car, while using a slower engine mode at the end of the start/finish straight to prevent excessive plank wear.

However, F1 technical expert Gary Anderson has dismissed Russell’s theory as ‘wacky’ and believes something else is afoot at Ferrari when writing in his column for The Telegraph.

Gary Anderson explains why George Russell theory on Ferrari struggles is ‘wacky’

Ferrari has been dealing with the issue of excessive plank wear for most of the season, after both Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were disqualified in China.

Russell’s suggestion would be consistent with those problems, but Anderson has explained why it would be tricky for Ferrari to make such a “strange” decision that would impact the driver on track.

“What Russell suggested is a bit wacky and far-fetched in my opinion. A team would not reduce performance in this way just to stop plank wear. There are numerous other, better and less dramatic solutions,” wrote Anderson.

“Firstly, you would change the set-up of the car, running the rear of the car stiffer or raising the ride-height slightly to reduce plank wear. Yes, there will be a performance loss but not to the extent we saw after his last stop.

“When it comes to tyre pressures, again, it seems unlikely. If you put the rear tyre pressures up you are guaranteed to lose performance from the rear tyres overheating. Doing this on a track where traction is absolutely critical is crazy. As we have seen in the past, Ferrari make some strange decisions but I do not for one second think that Russell is on to anything here. These changes are too much of a compromise.”

Fred Vasseur didn’t think Charles Leclerc would finish the race

Things became dire for Leclerc at the end of the race after he began to lose around three seconds per lap to the leaders.

Team principal Fred Vasseur thought Leclerc would not finish the Grand Prix, such was the seriousness of the problem they were dealing with at the time.

When he tried to defend his podium spot from Russell, the Ferrari driver was deemed to have moved too much under braking at the first corner.

The FIA Stewards would issue Leclerc with a five-second time penalty for erratic driving, adding to the frustration of their weekend.