Charles Leclerc's Dramatic Monza Race

Charles Leclerc’s home race at Monza lasted barely two laps. It still managed to deliver a week’s worth of drama.

Brutal end at Parabolica

Starting third on the grid in front of the Ferrari faithful, Leclerc never got the chance to settle into the Italian Grand Prix. On lap two, at the iconic Parabolica, the rear stepped out, the Ferrari slid across the gravel, half-spun and slammed sideways into the tyre barriers.

A heavy, jarring impact. Red flags followed as the race was halted for just over half an hour while marshals recovered the wrecked Ferrari and repaired the damaged barrier.

Leclerc was taken to the circuit medical centre, then to the hospital at the track for precautionary checks. He had been struggling with blurred vision in his right eye, a detail that added a sharp edge of concern to an already violent crash.

“That was what worried me the most. But it’s fine now,” he said later. He reported some pain after the impact, but nothing out of the ordinary for an accident of that force. No serious injuries. A bruising escape, not a career-altering one.

Sparks at Turn 2 with Hamilton

Before the crash, though, came the flashpoint. Two Ferrari drivers. One chicane. Almost no room.

Off the line, Leclerc from third and Lewis Hamilton from fourth launched into a fierce scrap through the opening corners. At Turn 2, Leclerc squeezed Hamilton hard, leaving the Briton with inches to spare and forcing him into the gravel as the pack streamed away.

“Lewis tried to overtake. There wasn’t much room,” Leclerc explained. “I then simply tried to take the second corner as tightly as possible. It was far too tight and I don’t know if we made contact. I was on the inside, running over the kerbs, and tried to make it through the corner. I didn’t manage to take it tightly enough, and then I saw in the rear-view mirror what had happened.”

What he saw was his team-mate bouncing through the gravel trap, his race instantly compromised.

“Of course, you never want that when you’re battling against your team-mate,” Leclerc added.

“We went too far”

The sight of two scarlet cars fighting that aggressively at Monza instantly fuelled talk of tension inside Ferrari. Leclerc moved quickly to shut that down.

“I don’t know where these stories come from, that we’re fighting against each other. That was already an issue at Zandvoort,” he said, insisting the relationship with Hamilton remains “peaceful and friendly”.

He did, though, offer a candid admission about how both drivers handled the opening corners.

“It’s true, though, that we went too far here. Lewis went too far in the first corner. Then I tried to take the second corner as tightly as possible, but it just wasn’t enough. Doing that, of course, isn’t good.”

It was an honest assessment of a sequence that left one Ferrari in the gravel and the other in the wall, and raised an uncomfortable question for a team chasing perfection at its home race: how hard is too hard when the car in your mirrors is painted the same shade of red?