Formula 1 | Leclerc ‘obviously’ doesn’t blame Verstappen for the tear-off

Charles Leclerc had great bad luck at Spa-Francorchamps, from the start of the race. The Ferrari driver saw a tear-off from Max Verstappen lodge on his car, causing overheating and the obligation to stop in the pits at the start of the race.

But the Monegasque is philosophical about the problem of visor protection, judging that the pilots cannot know what the consequence will be when they throw them behind them.

« In all honesty, you can’t calculate that. That’s the way it is » recalls Leclerc. « Maybe in the future it would be nice if we could find a solution to keep the tear-off inside the car. »

« In this particular situation, someone was losing oil and I couldn’t see anything through my visor, and the other riders couldn’t see anything through their visors either. »

« The first chance we had to remove the tear-off was on this straight, so I ended up with tear-offs flying all over the place, and in that case there’s not much you can do as a pilot. »

« Obviously I’m not mad at Max at all. It’s not the driver’s fault but we could look at something to find a way to put the tear-off somewhere in the car. »

In 2016, race management thought about forcing pilots to throw them in the cockpit, but finally agreed that this was more dangerous than getting rid of them on the track, with the only risk being the problem of the brakes.

However, Leclerc thinks that there are other solutions to be found: « I guess there were reasons why this rule was removed that I don’t know about. But maybe there are other solutions. »