Leclerc shrugs off talk of Monaco jinx

Charles Leclerc insists he won’t transpiration his tideway for this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix despite his terrible record at his home race.

The most successful Monegasque Formula 1 suburbanite in history, Leclerc has yet to finish his home race and similarly failed to score a point in his only Formula 2 outing there in 2017, despite dominating that year’s championship. Ahead of this year’s grand prix, Leclerc moreover crashed a Niki Lauda archetype Ferrari due to restriction failure at Rascasse, but he says the record doesn’t weigh on his mind.

“I don’t think well-nigh it,” Leclerc said. “Of undertow it has not been the luckiest track for me overall but it’s life, it happens. It’s part of motorsport — sometimes things just don’t go your way. Hopefully this year they will. I will take the same tideway I have in the first races of 2022, considering it has been successful up until now and hopefully it will be successful at home.

“I honestly don’t finger the pressure; I am just really happy to be here, to be when on this wondrous track. It is very special for me having grown up here, on these roads I know so well. There is no widow pressure — I know that the performance is in the car for a unconfined result. I just have to get into the car and do the job and hopefully the results will be there at the end of the weekend.”

Leclerc arrives at his home race having seen Max Verstappen take the championship lead off him with a victory in Spain that was aided by team orders at Red Bull, but the Ferrari suburbanite doesn’t think the Scuderia will need to follow suit any time soon.

“I don’t know, to be honest — I will definitely not be the one taking those types of decisions, so maybe you can ask Mattia (Binotto, team principal)! Red Bull made it well-spoken what their intentions are and they did it very early in the season, but concerning us I don’t know. I haven’t spoken well-nigh it with Mattia and I haven’t heard anything well-nigh this for now.

“But with Carlos (Sainz) I think it’s only a matter of time surpassing he gets with us and he gets increasingly at ease with the car. I don’t know, but I don’t want to rely on that either. I just want to do the job in the car and if we are strong unbearable we have once shown that we can win races anyway. If we do a strong unbearable job I’m pretty sure that the chances are there anyway.”