THE “LECLERC PROBLEM”
Calling Charles Leclerc simply an “aggressive” driver is convenient, but technically it does not tell us much. What truly defines his driving is not how late he brakes or how violently he turns the steering wheel. It is the way he uses steering, brakes, engine braking, and throttle simultaneously to manipulate the car’s balance throughout the corner.
Leclerc does not simply wait for the car to complete its rotation. He creates it.
On corner entry, he tends to keep the front axle loaded, overlapping the braking phase with turn-in more than most drivers. In certain corners, he also maintains a small amount of throttle while still braking. This is not a contradiction: the brakes act on all four wheels, while throttle and engine braking primarily affect the rear axle. By combining the two pedals, Leclerc can finely manipulate the car’s longitudinal balance and control the rate at which it rotates.
It is a technique that has already been observed in some of his best qualifying performances: apparently early braking, residual brake pressure carried deep into the corner, and throttle application used to stabilize the rear and redistribute load. At Baku, for example, this management allowed him to preserve the rear tires more effectively and reach the final sector with more grip than his teammate.
A Car That Is Made to Rotate
This technique is combined with a rather distinctive steering input. In slow and medium-slow corners, Leclerc often uses a sequence that can be described as “small input, big input”:
the first movement prepares the load transfer;
the second rapidly completes the rotation;
the throttle is then used to stop that rotation and stabilize the rear axle.
It is an extremely effective way of fighting understeer.
The result is that Leclerc can often make a car look responsive when, in someone else’s hands, it appears sluggish. But there is a price to pay: instead of simply driving within the car’s natural operating window, Charles constantly shifts that window through his own inputs.
When everything works, you get the Leclerc capable of seemingly impossible pole positions. When something suddenly changes, there is very little margin left for correction.
Why His Technique Can Become a Problem
The overlap between braking and throttle only works if the response of the power unit, engine braking, differential, and tires is exactly what the driver expects.
The issue, therefore, is not simply the application of throttle. It is how heavily the car’s stability depends on the precision of that application.
If torque arrives differently than expected, a rear tire crosses a lower-grip surface, the differential reacts unexpectedly, or the rear axle has already been unloaded by weight transfer, the input that is supposed to stop the rotation can instead amplify it.
And this is where one of Leclerc’s greatest strengths becomes a vulnerability: Charles drives extremely close to the point at which controlled rear rotation turns into an unrecoverable loss of grip.
The Monza Crash
At Parabolica, Leclerc was already dealing with a compromised situation:
his line had been affected by the battle;
the car was carrying significant lateral load;
the rear was already close to the limit;
throttle was being applied while the car was still completing its rotation;
the outside surface and curb could suddenly alter the available grip.
Charles explained that the response had already felt “strange” on the previous lap: he had applied the throttle, backed out of it, and then applied it again. On the following lap, he tried to manage the situation in the same way, but the reaction was different once again.
A driver who waits until the steering wheel is more open and the rear axle is fully settled before applying throttle may sacrifice something on entry or during the first phase of corner exit, but retains a larger safety margin. Leclerc, by contrast, uses the throttle while that margin is still being created.
At Parabolica, he did not necessarily enter the corner too fast. He reached the decisive phase of the corner with too many variables still unresolved at the same time.
Is It Really a Driving Flaw?
Not in the traditional sense.
Leclerc does not simply need to “drive cleaner” or stop overlapping the pedals. Eliminating this technique would probably also eliminate part of the speed that makes him special, particularly in qualifying and with cars characterized by understeer.
The problem emerges when Leclerc continues to use an extremely high-sensitivity technique even when the car or the conditions are no longer providing a sufficiently repeatable response.
The evolution required, therefore, is not about changing his driving style. It is about learning to modulate how aggressively he uses it:
the extreme version when tires, setup, and torque delivery are predictable;
a more conservative version when the rear is unstable, the tires are outside their operating window, or the racing line is compromised;
a greater willingness to accept a temporary loss of performance instead of immediately trying to recover it through pedal inputs.
Charles Leclerc’s Real Problem
Leclerc’s greatest enemy is not really his driving style. It is his difficulty in abandoning that style when the situation stops supporting it.
Charles has built part of his superiority around his ability to operate in the gray area between grip and instability. He feels the rear moving and does not necessarily interpret it as a warning. Quite often, he treats it as another tool for completing the corner.
That helps explain why he can extract laps that appear to exceed the capabilities of the car, but also why some of his crashes look so sudden and almost inevitable. When driving at the limit, Leclerc does not always preserve a second solution: the correction itself is already part of the technique he is using to generate lap time.
The point is not that Charles makes more mistakes because he is less precise. Paradoxically, he risks making them precisely because he is accurate enough to routinely operate within a window that other drivers prefer to avoid.
The Monza incident perfectly illustrates that paradox: the car responded unexpectedly at exactly the moment Leclerc was asking it to complete one of the most delicate operations in his repertoire.
His strength is his ability to control an unstable car. His limitation emerges when he continues to treat it as controllable even after it has started telling him otherwise.
© Simone Marchetti Cavalieri
