Dieter Rencken doesn't believe there was any darker motives at play behind Charles Leclerc's qualifying crash that guaranteed the Ferrari driver pole position in Monaco. Leclerc had set the fastest time on the first runs in Q3 when he made an error exiting the Swimming Pool complex and hit the barriers. As a result of the crash, he guaranteed himself pole position as the red flags prevented anyone behind him from going quicker. Such incidents have been seen before in Monaco, with Ferrari's Michael Schumacher making an unforced error at La Rascasse in 2006. He was thrown to the back of the grid as a punishment, after having been found to have done it on purpose. "Let me say these conspiracy theories are both healthy and very unhealthy," Rencken said on the RacingNews365 podcast. "I mean, they're healthy for the sport because they generate ink. They generate interest, they generate chat, they generate clickbait to certain websites, etc. But I kind of believe on the flip side that sort of accident, you don't plan to have that sort of accident. We have a look at the one that that Michael had in particular, all he did is he nicked the wing and then parked the car broadside across the circuit. Had Charles done that either purposely or by mistake, then I think that these sort of conspiracy theories could, under certain circumstances, be justified." Rencken explained that the extent of the crash, which caused a driveshaft failure that went unspotted at Ferrari and resulted in his retirement ahead of the race on Sunday, indicated that there were no games being played. "In this case, that was a massive, massive thump against the barriers," Rencken said. "And you know, apart from anything, it was just literally a couple of millimetres into the barrier and that bounced him off and then back across. "At those sorts of speeds, those aren't the sort of games that you play, parking a car broadside at Rascasse is very easy. To do that, to even attempt that would be just downright silly. For all we know, he could actually have written the whole car off or worse."
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