Charles Leclerc reveals Ferrari radio problems have plagued recent races

Leclerc endured a difficult race plagued by several issues as he finished seventh at the Hungaroring, one place ahead of Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz.

The Monegasque revealed after Sunday’s grand prix that he faced radio problems and admitted they prompted his spiky tone when responding to his race engineer. 

“The problem is that we have also a lot of problems with the radio,” Leclerc said. “One out of four words is not understood by my engineer because there is problems with our radio for three or four races. 

“We need to fix that, and obviously, my tone of voice is quite high because I need to make myself heard. 

“But I just wanted to make sure that they didn’t understand me wrong and that I wanted to go aggressive early and not aggressive late. It was just about clarifying because of our radio issues.” 

Leclerc also suffered from a slow first pit stop and picked up a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit lane which further compounded his afternoon, resulting in him dropping behind Mercedes’ George Russell at the flag. 

"I mean, the pitstop was quite slow,” he said. “And we had a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane. So yeah, it's again a weekend that is difficult.

“Honestly, it's frustrating overall, because I felt that with the pace we had today, even as a driver, when you are feeling like you're doing a good job with a car you have, nobody really notices it.

“And whenever you are doing a bad job, everybody notices it. So it's difficult. But at the end, it's part of the game. And it's just up to us now to do a step forward as McLaren did. 

“Now, we are in the back foot. And it's been confirmed since the last three weekends. So there's a lot of work to do again.”

Leclerc added: “Honestly, today, I feel like the result is much worse than what it felt like, the first stint felt pretty good, then with the slow stop, it really put us on the back foot being behind Lance [Stroll].

“I had to push a lot, then we were with Carlos and we lost a bit of time there. Then in the third stint, I pushed again and there again, the car felt quite OK. 

“I feel like the result looks a lot worse than what it actually is. But it’s clear that compared to Lando especially, we are still behind.”