Leclerc crashes out at Monza a lap after clattering Hamilton as Ferrari tensions boil over

Lap one: too aggressive, says the evidence

Charles Leclerc endured a day to forget at Monza. The Ferrari driver was arguably too aggressive with team-mate Lewis Hamilton at the first chicane on the opening lap, forcing Hamilton into the gravel and dropping him to 10th, before crashing out himself a lap later.

Parabolica exit amid Piastri battle

By the time of his accident at Parabolica, Leclerc had also been passed by Max Verstappen. The crash appeared to be influenced by the fact he was slightly wide into, through and out of the corner while defending an attack from McLaren's Oscar Piastri — although Leclerc himself insisted that was not the cause.

"I wouldn't say that this is the issue. From lap one to lap two, I had a bit of a difference in power delivery. We'll look into it, but I don't want to comment too much before checking the data and confirming it 100%."

Does the 'crash tendency' charge stick?

Leclerc has now crashed out of two races this year — the previous occasion came in Monaco, when he lost control at a restart on the broken track surface at Anthony Noghes. Before that, you have to go back nearly three years, to his car-damage retirement in an incident-packed race at Zandvoort in 2023.

By comparison, Hamilton has retired with car damage four times in the same period — in Brazil and the Netherlands last year, Austin in 2024 and Qatar in 2023.

Ferrari friction: 'far too late for those decisions'

Ferrari clearly have issues to sort out beyond the driving, too. Hamilton is unhappy that the team have effectively disregarded his — albeit slim — title hopes this year in favour of driver equality, and said after dropping more points to championship leader Kimi Antonelli that it was "far too late for those decisions to come".

The lap-one contact came in the context of Hamilton saying after qualifying that the pair had to "work as a team to try and topple" Mercedes.

Leclerc rejected suggestions the pair were at war over the incident:

"I don't really know who is forcing that narrative that we are one against the other. I mean, honestly, Zandvoort there was way too many talks already. Here it's true, though, that we went too far. Lewis in Turn One, then Turn Two, I tried to do the tightest corner possible, but that was just not enough and doing it here is not good."

Hamilton was not impressed when those remarks were relayed to him: "He said what? I was ahead in Turn Two. By the ethics, I was ahead. There was no 'we' in it." He added: "I don't race dirty. I've always raced clean and fairly and always left space."

Team boss Frederic Vasseur, who said he would talk to his drivers before discussing the matter in the media, has some smoothing over to do before this weekend's race in Madrid.