Why Leclerc opted to continue throughout Chinese GP with broken wing

Charles Leclerc has explained that the decision to soldier on with a broken front wing throughout the Chinese Grand Prix after contact with Lewis Hamilton was to preserve track position.

The two Ferraris made light contact at Turn 3 on the first lap as Hamilton tried to assume the apex line and clipped Leclerc, which knocked the endplate off his front wing.

Race engineer Bryan Bozzi told Leclerc that he was around “20-30 points of downforce” in arrears as a result of the clash, which the Monegasque reckoned he could deal with. As an estimate, this would lead to a time loss of around 0.2-0.3s per lap.

Leclerc’s pace appeared to defy the broken wing, and he chose to continue with it rather than prolong his pitstop.

His greater pace compared to Hamilton prompted Ferrari to swap its two drivers and let Leclerc run ahead to chase George Russell, and he got to within DRS range before a lock-up at Turn 14 called an end to his assault.

The front wing damage proved to be a thorn in Leclerc’s side, as his hard-compound front tyres started to degrade more heavily towards the end – which ultimately cost him in his battle for fourth with Max Verstappen.

“Of course we are speaking about a big [downforce] loss on my car, so there was for sure the potential to do a lot better,” Leclerc told Sky about the decision not to replace the wing.

“We didn’t want to take the eight seconds at the pitstop of changing the front wing, because then I will need to overtake cars and we were very weak in Turn 12.

“That was making us very vulnerable with the cars behind and it was very, very difficult to make any overtakes because on the way up to Turn 14 we were just too far off.

“I didn’t want to take that risk – I just wanted to keep track position and try to maximise the result.”

“Honestly, I think it wasn’t that quick,” Leclerc later added. “I mean it felt really bad. I think we were generally quick, we’ve seen it yesterday with Lewis, myself we saw it towards the end of the sprint where I was very strong.

“All in all, I think we had a really good race car and today I did a step with the car and I think that made it a lot better for today.”

Leclerc refused to blame Hamilton for the clash, calling it a “racing incident” and admitted neither driver expected to encounter each other into the corner.

Team principal Fred Vasseur explained that, although impressed by Leclerc’s pace on the broken front wing, the impact of electing not to change the wing was escalating.

“The positives are the pole of Lewis, the win of Lewis [in the sprint], and I would say the pace of Charles during the race with the front wing damage,” said Vasseur. “[With] the loss of downforce that we had, the pace was mega.

“And this is the positive of the weekend, but he struggled a bit on track at the end with the tyres because, with the loss of the front wing, it was much more difficult to manage.

“But at the end, overall we finished 20 seconds behind the McLaren with this damage. I think it’s a very good result and very strong result.”