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Charles Leclerc endured yet another painful Monaco Grand Prix weekend on Sunday, this time crashing out of a race he appeared set to finish on the podium — and the culprit was a catastrophic brake failure that left him with almost no tools to fight it.
The incident occurred at the restart following a red flag stoppage. As Leclerc approached the final corner, he had virtually no deceleration available — not by choice, but because the brakes had effectively stopped working.
"Out of the four brakes, I had three brakes not working," Leclerc told media. "In an F1 car, it's never a good thing. The front left was working well, the front right was half working, and the two rear brakes were not working at all. And when I say at all, it's on the data, there's no deceleration at all."
The Monegasque driver was quick to identify the trigger: the safety car period had effectively killed the brakes' ability to function, and no amount of in-car intervention could revive them. "As soon as I did the safety car, three of my four brakes stopped working. I could never switch them on again," he explained.
Leclerc also made clear that avoiding the crash was not a realistic option. Had he somehow navigated the final corner without brakes, the problem would simply have repeated itself at Turn 1. "The only solution I had was to not brake in the last corner, but I would have crashed into Turn 1. There was no way I could have done a lap."
Despite the severity of the incident, Leclerc confirmed that Ferrari already has a solution in place. From the Spanish Grand Prix, he will switch to the same brake specification currently used by Lewis Hamilton — a configuration change the team believes will resolve the recurring issues.
"We have a solution in-house and I'll go to Lewis' configuration from the next race onward which hopefully will be a step," Leclerc said, before summing up the weekend with characteristic bluntness: "It's been a nightmare."
The admission opens an intriguing question about Ferrari's internal setup divergence, with Hamilton and Leclerc running different brake configurations at the same team. It is also notable that Leclerc had flagged braking concerns during qualifying, where he described ongoing braking problems and lined up fourth on the grid — a sign that the issues pre-dated the race and were not an isolated anomaly.
Leclerc's account has not gone unchallenged. Brake supplier Brembo has responded to the driver's comments, expressing "great astonishment" and pushing back on what it described as premature accusations. The public disagreement between driver and supplier adds another layer of complexity to an already difficult situation for the Scuderia.
Leclerc, however, insists the data tells its own story. Whether the root cause turns out to be a wear issue — as he speculated — or something else entirely, the switch to Hamilton's specification before Barcelona signals that Ferrari is not waiting around for answers.
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.