Leclerc 'Very Ashamed' After Heavy Q3 Crash Drops Him to P10 at Barcelona-Catalunya

The crash

The Ferrari driver crashed on his first flying lap in Q3, suffering a snap of oversteer on the exit of the long right Turn 4 before spearing off into the gravel and making heavy head-on contact with the barrier.^[1]

Leclerc was unharmed in the incident, which brought out a red flag, and means he will start P10 for Sunday's 66-lap race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.^[1]

On his first Q3 run, Leclerc lost control of the car coming through Turn 4, snapping to the right and then over-correcting to the left before going across the gravel and into the wall.^[3]

He was able to climb out of the car unaided after the impact, although the medical car was deployed as the impact registered over the required automatic threshold.

Leclerc's explanation

Leclerc pointed to a deliberate tactical decision on corner entry as the root cause. "Q2 lap was really good, I think all corners we were the strongest nearly," he said. "Turn 4 was the weak corner for me so I released the brakes and I think I carried quite a lot more speed in, which was okay mid-corner but I ended up on the dirtier part of the track and lost the car."^[1]

Leclerc was direct in his self-assessment: "There's no excuses, I just feel ashamed."^[2]

When asked if the brakes had anything to do with his qualifying crash, Leclerc replied: "No, no, there's none of that."

Brake change context

Leclerc had switched brake disc supplier ahead of Sunday's race after crashing out of his home Monaco Grand Prix the previous weekend, opting to copy teammate Lewis Hamilton's move from Brembo to Carbon Industrie material, made at the Japanese Grand Prix earlier in the year.^[3] Despite that change, he was clear the new hardware played no role in Saturday's incident.

Grid and session impact

As that was his first flying lap of Q3, Leclerc was left 10th on the grid for Sunday's race, while team-mate Lewis Hamilton secured a place on the front row.^[4]

In a Q3 shootout compromised by Leclerc's accident, George Russell produced a final lap of 1:14.679 to take pole, outpacing Antonelli by 0.3 seconds.^[5]

Leclerc acknowledged he had known Turn 4 was a weakness and that everything needed to be perfect for the lap.^[2]

"Feeling very ashamed of coming here to speak in front of the camera after another 'what if'," he added. "Unfortunately last week was the same with what if we didn't have that issue in Monaco. This weekend is what if I didn't do that mistake."^[1]

:::analysis Leclerc's Q3 crash is the second in consecutive weekends, following his Monaco exit, and extends a sequence in which he has been unable to convert strong single-lap pace into grid positions. His Q2 performance suggested genuine front-row pace was available in the SF-26 on the Barcelona layout. Starting from the dirty side of the grid in P10 at a circuit where overtaking is traditionally constrained by track characteristics makes a points finish challenging but not impossible, particularly given Ferrari's apparent race-pace competitiveness this weekend. The fact that he publicly ruled out the new Carbon Industrie brake material as a factor suggests the team can carry that configuration into Sunday without concern about the hardware itself. :::

Related reading

• Tire degradation at Barcelona-Catalunya
• The undercut: how it works and when teams use it

^[1]: Formula 1 official site, "'No excuses' – Ferrari's Charles Leclerc 'feeling very ashamed' after 2026 Formula 1 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix Qualifying crash," formula1.com, accessed 2026-06-13. ^[2]: Autosport, "Leclerc left 'ashamed' after qualifying crash at F1 Barcelona GP," autosport.com, accessed 2026-06-13. ^[3]: ESPN, "Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix: Ferrari's Charles Leclerc 'ashamed' after qualifying crash," espn.com, accessed 2026-06-13. ^[4]: The Race, "Leclerc 'ashamed' of Barcelona qualifying crash," the-race.com, accessed 2026-06-13. ^[5]: Sky Sports, "Barcelona-Catalunya GP Qualifying: George Russell pips Lewis Hamilton to pole position as Charles Leclerc crashes out," skysports.com, accessed 2026-06-13. ^[6]: Planet F1, "Charles Leclerc Barcelona crash: Ferrari star 'ashamed' after qualifying disaster," planetf1.com, accessed 2026-06-13.