Charles Leclerc didn’t hide his disappointment after retiring from the lead of a race for the second time in three rounds.
The Ferrari driver was leading the 2022 Azerbaijan Grand Prix when smoke began to bellow out of the rear of his car. The Monegasque managed to make it into the pits, but was forced to retire, much like he did at the Spanish Grand Prix a few weeks ago.
With Max Verstappen taking the chequered flag in Baku, Leclerc now finds himself 34 points back in the Drivers’ Standings, and he made his disappointment with Sunday’s result known after the race.
“It hurts,” Leclerc told Sky Sports F1. “We really need to look into that for it to not happen again.
“I [can’t] really find the right words to describe. Obviously it’s very, very disappointing. We really need to look into it.”
Ferrari trending downwards
Even more worrying for Ferrari is the fact that Carlos Sainz also retired from Sunday’s race.
The Spaniard is believed to have suffered a hydraulic problem, and Leclerc had no answers as to why reliability is now a concern for the Scuderia.
“We’ve been fast and we didn’t have particularly big problems in the first part of the season,” he said. “Now it seems that we have a bit more compared to the beginning of the season.
“But we didn’t change massive things, if anything we made the thing better. So it’s difficult to understand for now but we will have to analyse.
“Obviously I don’t have the full picture of what happened today, just personally again it hurts.”
Ferrari‘s double DNF in Azerbaijan, along with Red Bull‘s one-two finish, means the Milton Keynes outfit now lead the Constructors’ Championship by 80 points.
