Charles Leclerc admits he is confused by drivers who approach their mistakes by making excuses, rather than being honest about when they are at fault. The Monegasque has had to face up to errors he has made on more than one occasion in his career, with a recent example being his crash out of the lead of the French Grand Prix. While Ferrari have also been responsible for some slip-ups during the 2022 season, Leclerc finds it more challenging to deal with mistakes when they are of his own making. "I'm extremely tough with myself," the Scuderia driver told the BBC . "So it is much more difficult to deal with my own errors than whenever it is the team, even though we are obviously one team and we lose and we win together."
Leclerc explains his process for dealing with mistakes
Looking back on his recent errors, Leclerc acknowledges that France was particularly painful, but says that he takes the same approach to dealing with each mistake. "I'm always harsher whenever it's me who does the mistake, and obviously France was one of those which which hurt quite a bit," he explained. "Imola also a little bit, even though there weren't many points involved because I could go back on track. "But whenever I go through this tough time, I go through the same process as I was saying before, trying to analyse what was wrong. And it's mostly mentally. "You know, what is the mindset that I had at that particular moment of the race that pushed me to go over the limit and do a mistake? "To speak about it seems quite easy, but it is not always easy to pinpoint exactly what was going on in your head at that moment. But I think this is a strength of mine and helps me to improve as a driver every time I make a mistake."
Leclerc confused by drivers who are not honest
Leclerc has always taken the approach of being honest about his mistakes, something that he believes is beneficial to him. "[Errors are] part of the experience; it's part of the path of anybody in whatever work you do – at one point, a mistake will happen," Leclerc added. "Every individual will react in a different way. This is my way of reacting to it. And I've always felt the benefit of being honest with yourself and just grow from it." Some drivers lean more towards making excuses for errors, and Leclerc admits that he finds this approach hard to understand. "I really don't see the point of hiding it," he continued. "And sometimes it is so obvious to everybody that the mistake comes from driver, I just don't understand the drivers that are trying to have excuses with the wind or whatsoever. "I mean, sometimes it can happen. One out of 200 crashes, you'll get something very strange happen. But I just don't like to lose time with finding excuses, because that's exactly when you start to lose time, and you just don't go forward. "This is also good for the people that are working around me because they know that whenever I'm going to do a mistake, I'm gonna be very honest and I hope that is going to be the same for them. "So then everybody can just learn quicker and it is the case in Ferrari."
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