09/08/2025 15:40
Former Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner was left "mystified"
by Charles Leclerc's sudden loss of pace in the Hungarian Grand
Prix, noting he does "not fucking know" what happened. Leclerc
stunned the paddock by beating the McLarens to pole position at the
Hungaroring, before leading the opening two stints of the race.
However, following his final pit-stop, everything went wrong. The
Monegasque lost all pace following his second and final stop and
was quickly overtaken by both Oscar Piastri and George Russell,
whilst Lando Norris inherited the lead on an alternate strategy.
It triggered a several furious radio outbursts from Leclerc to his
race engineer, with the Ferrari driver having finished in fourth.
However, in bizarre circumstances, he immediately took back his
radio anger in the media pen, revealing he had been told after the
race that his SF-25 had a chassis-related issue. To add to the
weirdness behind the entire situation, it has yet to be confirmed
exactly what this chassis problem was, leaving the paddock, and
Steiner, confused. Asked on the Red Flags podcast what happened to
Leclerc, Steiner replied: "You know what it is? I do not fucking
know. "I'm as clueless as you and I'm not trying... because when I
heard them on the radio, I was like, 'What has gone wrong here?'
and then the performance got worse and worse and worse. "And then
at the end of the race, everybody's happy, 'Oh, something strange
happened' but what? 'Oh, yeah, I don't know' I have no idea. And
I'm sure if I ask Fred [Vasseur], he will not tell me." Steiner
disagrees with Russell's theory A theory was raised by Mercedes and
Russell after the Hungarian GP as to why the Silver Arrows believe
Leclerc lost so much pace, pinning it to concerns of a
disqualification. Russell revealed the theory that perhaps
Leclerc's car was close to running an illegal level of plank wear,
which would result in disqualification – Lewis Hamilton was
disqualified from China for this reason. To counter the problem,
Russell added the idea that Ferrari increased the pressure of
Leclerc's tyres for his final stint and ran a lower engine mode.
Discussing Russell's plank wear theory, Steiner explained: "It is a
theory, but it's almost too simplistic to me. "It's almost too
simplistic that Ferrari would make a strategy decision [like this],
because it's not a mistake, because if they knew about it, it's not
a mistake. "You gamble on it, you know, so. But that they would get
it this wrong? I don't think so, because if you can calculate it,
you don't get it as wrong as this. "There are smart people there,
so I don't know what [it was]. I've actually no idea what it was. I
mean, obviously the whole thing was very weird, how it was also
handled."
