Charles Leclerc warned his Ferrari team he almost crashed when his car slowed without warning during the Singapore Grand Prix.
The fault struck as he rounded turn 13 on the 46th lap of the race. Leclerc’s car appeared to slow unusually as he began to accelerate out of the corner.“What the fuck happened?” Leclerc exclaimed. “The car started to brake on its own!”
“Keep pushing,” race engineer Bryan Bozzi replied. “I’ll try and fix it soon.”
The problem struck Leclerc’s car at the slowest corner on the track. He appeared to be concerned it could cause a crash if it recurred elsewhere on the circuit.
“If this happens again, and I have no control of the car, I put it in the wall,” said Leclerc on the following lap.
Bozzi appeared confident that would not happen. “It was a single case, should not happen, I’ll come back to you,” he said.
Two laps later Bozzi communicated a settings change which appeared to address the problem. “We need white 10 position two, white 10 position two to help with the issue you had before,” he told Leclerc.
Leclerc did not indicated the problem occured again over the rest of the race. His team mate Lewis Hamilton did not report any similar problems on his car.
Aside from his scare on lap 46, Leclerc declared himself pleased with his car’s performance. “We brought some small parts here and there on the car, which maybe helped us to do a step forward,” he said.
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