Leclerc Miami F1 crashes a result of trying too hard, says Ferrari

The Monegasque driver has twice crashed at Turn 7 this weekend, first losing the car in second practice on Friday before the rear snapped and he span into the barrier in Q3.

The resulting red flag left Sergio Perez on pole ahead of Fernando Alonso, while Leclerc's banker lap placed him seventh with 2022 championship rival Max Verstappen in ninth.

Leclerc explained on Saturday that he took a risk with the set-up and, although he remains convinced that opting for a “difficult” setup was the best way to extract the maximum from his Ferrari SF-23, he may have gone too far with that direction.

He acknowledged that he was being hard on himself after his mistake and conveyed his disappointment to crash out in qualifying.

“For sure I'm very disappointed with myself,” he said. “Same mistake as [Friday] in the same corner. I also know that qualifying is my strong point and obviously I am taking more risk.

“In Q3 that pays off nine times out of 10. But obviously this is a weekend where twice I put it in the wall, and this is just not the level where I want to be.

“I obviously need to, in those weekends especially, just manage it differently in Q3. But at the end it's like this.

“I think I put myself also in a difficult situation because I wanted a very aggressive setup for qualifying, knowing that this was a setup I will need to extract the most out of the car. I probably did a step too far, and this is something I'll look at after the weekend.

“We know we have a weakness in terms of tailwind. Whenever we have tailwind, we suffer more from other cars. But I wanted that car to be very tricky because I knew that's the way you need to drive this car. And today, it was too much.”

Ferrari has subsequently changed the rear wing, gearbox, floor and rear suspension on the SF-23, although the new parts have come from the allocated pool so will not incur a grid penalty.

Leclerc's driver coach Jock Clear implied the cause of the shunt was driver error, rather than rear-end instability triggered by a bump or an aerodynamic characteristic.

The crash damaged Charles Leclerc Ferrari SF-23 is returned to the pits on the back of a truck

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

He said: "In some ways, this maybe is a reflection of his mindset when he is up against a car that is demonstrably quicker than him [like the Red Bull].

"It's a sort of: 'I'm just going to have to make the difference myself'. Of course, physics ultimately catches you out."

The team will not ask Azerbaijan sprint and grand prix polesitter Leclerc to change his approach to qualifying.

Clear said: "We're not going say to him: 'Look, calm down, Charles'. Over the course of a year, his qualifying is outstanding. That puts him in a very strong position for a lot of races.

"I think he smelled the opportunity for another pole position, to be honest, and maybe just got a bit ahead of himself."

Further suggesting the shunt was not triggered by the inherent handling of the car, Ferrari reckons a revised floor for Miami has instead made the SF-23 more "benign".

The front and mid-floor and diffuser geometry have been tweaked just ahead of the rear wheels to control airflow to the diffuser. The impact has been described as "powerful".

Clear explained: "It gives the driver a more consistent balance through medium-speed, high-speed, low-speed, and of course, braking and entry and then exit.

He added: "Maybe what happened yesterday with Charles is actually a testament to that. He was really going for it in those high-speed Turns 4-6 curves."

Ferrari also reckoned "self-preservation" kicked in during Leclerc's crash, as he turned a head-on crash into a backwards spin into the barriers to potentially risk a grid penalty from the component changes.