Jenson Button reckons if it’s a tricky race, his advice to the grid is do “the opposite of what Charles Leclerc does” as the driver all too often gets it wrong.
Leclerc lined up sixth in a rain-affected British Grand Prix, but 52 laps later, he was down in 14th place after a disappointing race.
Jenson Button: Do the opposite of what Charles Leclerc does
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
After Friday’s intense heat gave way to cooler conditions on Saturday and rain on Sunday, the drivers lined up for the formation lap on the intermediate tyres.
But as the rain abated, five drivers, including Leclerc, ducked into the pits to gamble on the slick tyres.
It didn’t work for Leclerc, who fell outside of the points and struggled in the changing conditions to work his way back into the top ten.
He eventually did so after a period of intense rain that necessitated a swap back to the intermediate Pirellis.
But back on slicks for the final stint, Leclerc up to seventh on a set of soft tyres, the Monegasque driver hit a damp patch and a snap of oversteer sent him hurtling off the track, collecting Carlos Sainz in the process.
Leclerc finished the race down in 14th place, a disappointing outcome given his team-mate Lewis Hamilton was fighting for the podium and finished fourth.
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Button, F1’s 2009 World Champion, quipped that in a tricky race such as Silverstone was, his advice to the rest of the field is to do the opposite of whatever Leclerc does.
“I mean, it seems like if you’ve got a tricky race like this, you do the opposite of what Charles Leclerc does,” he told Sky F1.
“It’s never been a strong point of him or his engineer, or whoever it is, but they always seem to come off worse in these tricky conditions.”
Leclerc says he will sit down and analyse with Ferrari what went wrong.
He told the media, including PlanetF1.com: “We were kind of nowhere, the whole race. When I say nowhere, I was really nowhere. I was a second off and on top of that was really struggling to keep the car on track.
“So it was an incredibly difficult day. I need to analyse what was going on.”
The driver admitted the decision to swap to slicks on the formation lap was his call.
“No, I’m not happy with the decision,” he said, before conceding: “That was my decision.
“The first and second sector was kind of for slicks. Third Sector was wet, but this, I expected it. I had seen it. But I expected the track to dry a lot quicker. It did not.
“We were [among] quite a few to have done that mistake, of thinking that it will dry quickly.
“This is part of the reason why we had a bad race, but I’ll say that the biggest part is the lack of pace, and on that, I want the answers before going back home.”
Leclerc remains on 119 points and fifth in the Drivers’ Championship with Hamilton in sixth closing the gap to 16 points.
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