“Three out of four brakes not working”

Charles Leclerc’s Monaco Grand Prix ended in a crash at Antony Noghes corner ahead of the safety car restart. The Monegasque slid into the barriers while running third, immediately letting Ferrari know over the radio that he wasn’t at fault.

“I’m not even going to take the blame,” he said to the team – and later confirmed to journalists in Monaco that a severe technical issue had left him effectively unable to stop the car.

“Out of the four brakes, I had three brakes not working,” Leclerc said. “So in a Formula 1 car, it’s never a good thing.

“The front left was working well, the front right was half working, and the two rear brakes were not working at all. And when I say at all, it’s that on data, there’s no deceleration at all. It’s like the calipers were not even in the car.”

Leclerc described the situation as “a nightmare”, but said Ferrari already had a solution identified and that he would switch to the same brake configuration currently used by team-mate Lewis Hamilton from the next race onward.

“The only thing I can say is that we have the solution in-house, and I’ll go to the Lewis configuration from next race onward, which hopefully will be a step,” Leclerc said.

According to Leclerc, the issue appeared after a safety car intervention and became progressively worse – to the point that, had he not braked at all at Antony Noghes, he would then inevitably have crashed going into Turn 1.

“As soon as I did the safety car, three of my four brakes stopped working,” he explained. “I could never switch them on again, nothing was working anymore. I tried to do many actions in the car to try and help it. The only solution I had was to not brake in the last corner, but I would have crashed in Turn 1. There was just no solution.”

While Ferrari is still investigating the exact cause of the failure, Leclerc suggested it could potentially be related to brake wear, which has historically been a challenge around Monaco’s tight street circuit.

“I don’t know if it was a wear issue,” said the Monegasque. “It’s often a problem here. I don’t know what it was, but there was a clear issue.” Asked whether he had experienced anything similar before, Leclerc replied: “No, not to that extent.

“Surely sometimes it’s a little bit tricky, but there it was just not possible to go around a corner.”

Leclerc said Ferrari’s senior management, including team boss Fred Vasseur, had already reviewed the data and agreed on the diagnosis.

“Fred and Jerome [d’Ambrosio, Ferrari deputy team principal] saw the data, and I think it’s very clear for everyone. I don’t think there’s any doubt,” he said.

Asked whether there were any positives to take away from the weekend, he replied: “That I’ll have a solution for the brakes next weekend.”

Leclerc is currently fourth in the drivers’ championship standings with 70 points. Hamilton, thanks to his second-place finish in Monaco, moved up to second with 90 points.

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– The Autosport.com Team