Charles Leclerc said he never feared he was cursed not to win his home race after finally scoring his first Monaco Grand Prix victory.
The Ferrari driver endured several misfortunes during his first appearances in the race. He took pole position for it on two occasions before this weekend without winning, but finally delivered his longed-for win yesterday.“I never believed in the curse,” said Leclerc after his win. “However, it always felt very difficult in the two occasions I had to win here.
“One, I couldn’t even start the race. The second one, we didn’t make the right choice, I think. So it was very, very frustrating to lose those wins.”
Leclerc didn’t start from his pole position in 2021 due to a technical problem before the race began. The following year he led the opening stages but a poorly-timed pit stop left him fourth at the end.
Those missed chances were part of a pattern of misfortune broken by yesterday’s victory. Leclerc retired from his first Monaco Grand Prix with a brake failure in 2018 and Ferrari blundered in qualifying the year after. Even in his dominant Formula 2 campaign success at home eluded Leclerc.
While Leclerc admitted he felt some tension over his poor record at home, he put that from his mind in order to seize his opportunity yesterday.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
“The thing is that as a driver you never really know when will be the next opportunity to win and especially when it’s your home race – and even more so when your home race is Monaco, that is such a special track, such a difficult track and such a difficult weekend to master and to do everything perfectly which we did.
“So I knew that today was another opportunity. I knew how it felt the last two times I was in this position. I obviously really wanted to get that victory today, so there’s a bit of tension.
“But as I’ve said, as soon as I put the helmet on and as soon as I get into the car I don’t feel anything anymore. Then it’s all about trying to maximise the car that you have thinking about the tyres and thinking about all the stuff that I had to think of to manage this race the best way possible.”
He faced an unusual challenge in the race, as he and almost every other driver made their mandatory tyre changes after the race was red-flagged on the first lap and did not need to pit again. Leclerc was called on by his team to limit his pace and prevent those behind having the opportunity to make pit stops.
However he felt the need to increase his pace when Oscar Piastri made an attempt to overtake him early in the race.
“I was managing like crazy,” he admitted. “We were probably three seconds off the pace, three-and-a-half seconds off the pace.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
“I knew that I just had to push a little bit more. The thing that I didn’t know is how much Oscar Piastri was willing to push at this moment of the race, knowing that there were still 70 laps to go. So as soon as I saw that, I was like, ‘okay, maybe I’m not going to take it that easy in the slow part’ just to not be under too much pressure there. But after that, I felt like we had everything under control.”
He backed off so much in the early stages he felt capable of running much further than the 78-lap race distance.
“The pace of the car was amazing,” he said. “The tyres felt really, really good.
“Even in the last laps, I felt like I could do another race. There was a lot of tyre management, obviously, at the beginning. So everything felt really, really good.”
Leclerc admitted his mind began to wander as he neared the chequered flag. “It’s more the thoughts in the last 15 laps that were very difficult to manage and a lot more than in the past in my career. But no negative thoughts.
“It was more, again, about everything that has happened until now, but good moments in karting and dreaming of getting there and most of these moments. But none of the bad moments of the last few years.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2024 Monaco Grand Prix
- Formula 1 will fix red flag rule loophole which ruined Monaco GP – Domenicali
- Magnussen ‘could have backed off but didn’t’ in Monaco crash, says team boss
- Ocon defends his driving after ‘hurtful abuse’ over Monaco GP crash with Gasly
- How the midfield’s hottest team mate rivalry boiled over
- “He’s really dangerous”: Unheard driver radio from F1’s slow show in Monaco
Moshambles (@moshambles)
27th May 2024, 11:21
He’s not a child
Hotbottoms (@hotbottoms)
27th May 2024, 11:25
While it is true that Leclerc has had bad luck and poor strategies in Monaco in the past, it isn’t surprising in the big picture that he hasn’t won in Monaco before. Out of 133 entries, he has 6 wins, giving him about a 4.5% win ratio. Furthermore, while pole position is more valuable in Monaco than elsewhere, his overall win-pole rate isn’t that great either: 6 wins and 24 pole positions (25%).
Another way to assess his success in Monaco is to look at his performance on other tracks. By the end of last season, he had won on 5 out of the 22 tracks on the 2023 calendar, which is about 23% of the tracks. In a sense, one could argue that he’s been lucky that one of his few wins (so far) happened on his home track.
Andre
27th May 2024, 12:16
The problem is competing against very dominant cars. First it was Mercedes, now it is RBR. We are experiencing the most dominant seasons back to back F1 has seen, so winning a race over 40-50 laps is normally harder than to snatch a pole position over a single lap. Charles is like a single lap wizard stealing pole positions from dominant teams.
jjj89
27th May 2024, 14:16
hes not wizard, ferrari have been good one lap for the past 2 or 3 years, in 2022 they fixed the race pace for a while but then they crumbled with seasons updates like usual
Mark (@mrcento)
27th May 2024, 20:15
To be fair to Leclerc on the pole/win ratio, it probably tells you that he’s exceptional over 1 lap and is often putting a car on pole that probably doesn’t really deserve to be there.
Matthijs (@matthijs)
27th May 2024, 14:24
I am amazed how much superstition is still around in an era of science. It’s good that Leclerc does not believe in this nonsense.
Tarn Burton (@yitzchak)
28th May 2024, 2:07
Really? Most surveys indicate that 25% of the world believes in the “spiritual energy of crystals. Good luck asking them about something actually pertinent to crystals/lattices like Brillouin zones.