'Nightmare' brake issues the cause of Lecler's Monaco crash, not the track

Charles Leclerc said he was having “nightmare” problems with his brakes in the Monaco Grand Prix that caused him to crash at the final corner, rather than the track breaking up.

Lance Stroll hit the barrier on the outside of the final corner after running over a section of asphalt that had been breaking up during the race, leading to a safety car period. When Leclerc had the same accident on the restart, the race was red flagged for an inspection to take place, but the Ferrari driver says it was an issue with his brakes that caused the incident.

“Out of the four brakes, I had three brakes not working,” Leclerc said. “So in a Formula 1 car, it's never a good thing. The front left was working well, the front right was half working, and the two rear brakes were not working at all. And when I say at all, it's that on data, there's no deceleration at all. It's like, I don't know, the calipers were not even in the car. So it's a little bit of an issue.

“The only thing I can say is that we have the solution in-house, and I'll go to Lewis’ [Hamilton's] configuration from next race onwards, which hopefully will be a step. But yeah, it's been a nightmare.

“As long as I was doing consecutive [laps], it was inconsistent, but there was none of those problems, at least to that extent. The problem was the Safety Car. As soon as I did the Safety Car, three of my four brakes stopped working.

“I could never switch them on again, nothing was working anymore. I tried to do many actions in the car to try and help it. The only solution I had was to not brake in the last corner. But I would have crashed in Turn 1. There's no way I could have done a lap. There was just no solution. So we'll look into it. I don't know if it was a wear issue - it’s often a problem here - I don't know what it was, but there was a clear issue.”

Leclerc had been running in third place when he retired from his home race, and says the only positive from the weekend is that the problem can be addressed at next week’s Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.

“We know from where it's coming from, and as I said, we have the solution, and I'll have it on my car from next race,” he said. “It's very clear. I think Fred [Vasseur] and Jerome [D’Ambrosio] then saw the data, and I think it's very clear for everyone. I don't think there's any doubt.”