Leclerc says Le Mans is a ‘box I want to tick’ after Ferrari victory

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In the round-up: Charles Leclerc says he wants to take part in the Le Mans 24 Hours one day after Ferrari won the event for the first time in 58 years.

In brief

Leclerc hopes to tackle Le Mans “one day”

Speaking yesterday after Ferrari claimed its first outright victory at La Sarthe since 1965, Leclerc said he “would love to” take part in the race himself one day.

“It’s an incredible event,” he told Eurosport. “For sure one day in my life I want to tick that box. When it will be I don’t know. I’m just extremely proud of what Ferrari has done today. It’s been crazy.”

Former F1 driver Antonio Giovinazzi shared victory in the race with Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado. Ferrari’s second car finished fifth.

“It feels absolutely amazing,” said Leclerc. “Having a Ferrari winning it’s incredible after a return after so many years, it’s a very special edition. Unlucky for the second Ferrari as we had a small impact with a small rock on one radiator so that made us lose a lot of time.”

Hartley defends Hirakawa over costly crash

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Toyota hypercar driver Brendon Hartley backed team mate Ryo Hirakawa after his potentially race-losing crash at Arnage late in the race. The number eight Toyota was chasing the race-winning Ferrari at the time.

Having been 16 seconds off the lead before Hirakawa’s error, the car dropped to more than three minutes adrift. The leading Ferrari beat them to victory by 81 seconds.

“I knew if we just tried to put them under some kind of pressure, they had the pace advantage, but we did everything,” Hartley said after the race. “We threw everything at them.

“We put Ryo in, we said, ‘look, full risk, maximum attack – we want to win the race’. He had a little accident, it happens. It could happen to any of us, and it happened to many guys out there the last 24 hours. So full support for Ryo as well. The goal was to go maximum attack and that’s what we did.”

Boya takes clean sweep at Monza

MP Motorsport driver Mari Boya won the second of two races in the Eurocup-3 at Monza to complete a clean sweep of the weekend and take his third successive win in his participation in the series.

Boya fell to third at the start but climbed back to pass Esteban Masson in the closing laps to win. The victory moves Boya up to second in the series championship, four points behind Masson.

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Comment of the day

This weekend’s Caption Competition winner is WesselV1:

For comparison, here’s the Williams floor…
WesselV1

Thanks to everyone who came up with caption idea this week and a special mention to Rich Hill, The Limit and Rick Gomez who all came up with particularly good suggestions.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Zimkazimka and Deb Trom!

On this day in motorsport

  • 30 years ago today Jacques Villeneuve won the Formula Atlantic race supporting the Canadian Grand Prix

Author information

Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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14 comments on “Leclerc says Le Mans is a ‘box I want to tick’ after Ferrari victory”

  1. Profile Photo

    Jere (@jerejj)
    12th June 2023, 5:58

    Good Caption Competition choice, & what I meant by my answer was that by watching the video on their little boat race on Red Bull Racing’s official Youtube channel, one finds out what they truly said.

  2. Profile Photo

    EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
    12th June 2023, 6:23

    Must say I enjoyed Le Mans this year. It’s the motorsports event that I have attended the most, though not for many years now. Really great to see Ferrari win (despite my not usually cheering on the F1 team, being on the Ford side of things from the famous historical encounters, and being a little miffed at the pre-Le Mans rule changes).

    Very good winning caption, made me laugh out loud. (I missed it this week, but even with hindsight can only muster “Somewhat unsurprisingly Checo breezed the Red Bull Chili eating contest”…………….. though in this day and age I am unsure if this would be considered inappropriate?)

    1. Profile Photo

      Frasier (@frasier)
      12th June 2023, 9:26

      though in this day and age I am unsure if this would be considered inappropriate?

      It’s a funny caption competition, shows how the humourless have persuaded people to self censor to a ridiculous degree. It’s got to stop.

      I watched the 4 hours of live Le Mans night racing [recorded it of course], broadcast on Quest. Amazed to see the top four cars within 20 seconds of each other for long periods. Four different makes. Closer than the average F1 GP.

      1. Nick T.
        14th June 2023, 18:39

        How dare you not feel guilty for having a sense of humor?!

  3. Profile Photo

    Steve (@duuxdeluxe)
    12th June 2023, 7:19

    I mean, if Charles is also interested, there could be a pretty awesome pro-team of Verstappen, Alonso and Leclerc. Only question is in which car.

    1. Profile Photo

      BlueChris (@bluechris)
      12th June 2023, 8:41

      Alonso had raced so there is no point for him to race again but a team of Leclerc-Verstappen-Hamilton will be a huge event in the same car. They can choose Toyota or Peugeot for this to avoid the conflict of interests with Ferrari.

      1. Nick T.
        14th June 2023, 18:46

        I’d personally rather see Fernando-Lewis-Max since, besides Schumacher, no one since Senna and Prost is even close to being in their league. So, the three best drivers all of whom had major beefs with each other at some point.

        It’d be so fun to see them quash their silly “beefs” as teammates or alternatively let it fuel them to be super competitive and lap the other team’s car like 57 times.

  4. Profile Photo

    Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
    12th June 2023, 8:00

    Not sure Charles would have the patience and concentration to keep it on the road for those long stints but it would be amazing to see.

  5. MichaelN
    12th June 2023, 11:57

    Hartley is right, when you ask a driver to push 100% it’s going to increase the risk of making mistakes. It’s why races like Schumacher in Hungary 1998 are still talked about 25 years on; it’s an extremely rare and impressive feat to do that flawlessly.

    And it’s not like Pier Guidi didn’t also put his Ferrari in gravel.

  6. Profile Photo

    SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
    12th June 2023, 15:00

    I am not sure I agree with Button. With all due respect to him and the other participants of Le Mans as well as Indycar, it’s not really a big advertisement for the sport when mediocre to bad F1 drivers win the “big ones.” Are we really going to say Lewis and Max aren’t the greatest of all time if they aren’t winning races that are won by the likes of Giovinazzi, Takuma Sato, Seb Buemi, Markus Ericsson?

    I’ve no doubt Max and Lewis could and likely would win any of these races, and I’m sure they’d have a lot of fun participating in them. But Max and Lewis have nothing left to prove here to solidify their respective “all time great” status. They’re multiple world champions in the biggest competition with the toughest field of competition, that’s all the proof you need.

    1. S
      12th June 2023, 16:58

      So basically, you are saying that only the best racing drivers in the world compete in F1, and only the best of those win races and championships?
      Regardless of any other conditions or circumstances, such as the quality or consistency of the cars and teams they are employed by? That’s a really imaginative and adventurous claim.

      That stance leaves me with a lot of questions…. None of which I’d expect a sensible and logical answer to.

      I have no doubt that Max and Lewis could win in other series too – provided they were in the fastest cars. That’s how they’ve done it in F1, and it isn’t any different anywhere else.

    2. Profile Photo

      Esploratore (@esploratore1)
      12th June 2023, 18:33

      No, considering how much car importance f1 has, winning with the best car is not enough. Thankfully hamilton has a good performance in 2007, although he didn’t win and verstappen has the years before 2021.

    3. MichaelN
      12th June 2023, 21:45

      Are we really going to say Lewis and Max aren’t the greatest of all time if they aren’t winning races that are won by the likes of Giovinazzi, Takuma Sato, Seb Buemi, Markus Ericsson?

      Those drivers mentioned all have a record of respectable success in junior series.

      Does this work the other way around? Sure.

      What was Michael Schumacher (7x F1 champion) best result at Le Mans? A 5th place.
      What was Fernando Alonso (2x F1 champion) best result in Indycar? A 21st place.
      What was Jenson Button (1x F1 champion) best result at Le Mans? A 39th place in a non-competitive entry.
      What was Juan-Pablo Montoya (2x Indy 500 winner) best result at Le Mans? A 7th place, 3rd in class
      What was Scott Dixon (6x Indycar champion and 3+(1class)x winner of the Daytona 24h) best result at Le Mans? 4th.

  7. Profile Photo

    Niefer (@niefer)
    12th June 2023, 21:38

    I could dream of a Leclerc-Vettel-Raikkonen trio. Only former Ferrari F1 drivers, it’d be really nice, even more so if they won, imagine the story!

Comments are closed.