Charles Leclerc urges Ferrari to 'look in the mirror' after major team error

Charles Leclerc has stated Ferrari was forced to "look in the mirror" after a major error in Sepang last weekend.

Amid changeable conditions, Ferrari opted to start the race on dry tyres, as did some of its fellow drivers.

However, the correct choice proved to be the intermediate compound, as those on the wet-weather tyre built a major gap to the rest of the pack, including Ferrari.

Those who made the error had their losses minimised when a safety car was deployed, with Ferrari going on to recover to third with Lewis Hamilton and fourth with Leclerc.

However, Leclerc insisted Ferrari did not take the matter lightly and conducted a complete review after the grand prix.

"After every race in which we don't make the right decisions, or when things are not going quite right, we analyse as a team," Leclerc told media including RacingNews365.

"[We look at] what each other, individually, could have done better, which we did. Going into the detail of the conclusion of that would be wrong.

"But surely after this kind of thing, we need to look at ourselves in the mirror.

"It's pretty clear that we made the wrong choice at the start of the race. We'll get better from that.

"We've analysed well, we've worked a lot on it, and I'm confident that there will be a step forward."

However, Leclerc insisted that the margins were so tight at the time and highlighted that several other teams also made the wrong call.

"It's also true to be said that at the beginning of the race, the tyre choice was half of the grid with the right choice and half of the grid with the wrong choice," he said.

"That is not the first and last time that it will happen, sometimes it's not clear-cut, and it wasn't.

"We've regrouped and analysed whatever we could have done better."