For Charles Leclerc, victory in Spielberg was hanging by a thread: The Ferrari driver had to reach into his bag of tricks because his accelerator pedal got stuck
For five races Charles Leclerc had not been on the podium, but with his victory in Spielberg the Ferrari driver broke the curse. But the success came under severe threat in the closing stages when the Monegasque reported some problems with his accelerator pedal.
“The accelerator feels a bit strange,” Leclerc radioed his crew with ten laps to go. At Ferrari, they couldn’t find anything unusual in the data at first, but Leclerc was complaining about inconsistencies with regularity: “What’s going on with my accelerator?”
At that point he was not even four seconds ahead of Max Verstappen and had to tremble for his victory once again – always with the knowledge in the back of his mind that team-mate Carlos Sainz had retired shortly before with a technical problem. “That came at a similar time, strangely enough, so of course it was in my mind. “
But there was nothing wrong with Leclerc’s engine, instead his throttle got stuck and wouldn’t go back to the starting position. “It stayed at 20 or 30 per cent,” he explains. This meant the car was always accelerating, even in slow corners.
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Leclerc leads but he’s in constant contact with his team – there’s an issue with the throttle. AustrianGP F1 pic.twitter.com/No4yxbQwiP
– Formula 1 (@F1) July 10, 2022
The slow turn 3 in particular became a problem for him: “You don’t want to have any extra speed there,” he says.
But Leclerc adapted to the circumstances and tried to work around the problems: “I just had to do a bit of lift-and-coast to know how much gas I would have in the corner,” he explains his tactics. So Leclerc let himself roll into the corners so as not to get a nasty surprise.
His car didn’t seem to like it though, because a little later the Monegasque reported problems with the gearbox, which would reject some operations when downshifting.
“It wasn’t just a bit stressful, it was very stressful,” he said. But in the end, Leclerc was able to maintain the lead and claim his first win since the race in Australia. “I definitely needed this win,” he breathes.
“I always come to a race with a smile on my face and I was always optimistic, but after some tough races it felt like everything was going against me,” he says. In Spielberg, however, everything was to turn out well once again. “Finally we had a breakthrough and a good race today. It just feels good to win again. “
