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Why Charles Leclerc’s Dutch GP Crash Could Have Been Avoided if Ferrari Trusted Him

Originally posted on Athlon Sports | By Samriddhi Jaiswal | Last updated Sep 3, 2025 2:50 AM ET

Charles Leclerc’s Dutch grand Prix ended in bitter disappointment after a collision with Mercedes’ Andrea Kimi Antonelli, but the crash could have been avoided if his team had trusted his instincts on strategy.

Running fifth at Zandvoort, Leclerc was told Antonelli had pitted for his second stop on lap 40. Ferrari feared the Mercedes rookie’s undercut and immediately called their driver to cover the move. But Leclerc pushed back.

“Okay, I think we'll stay,” he told his engineer Bryan Bozzi, insisting his tyres still felt strong. Even when Bozzi clarified, Leclerc stood firm: “Yeah, let’s stay out. Let’s try.”

Ferrari overruled. At the exit of Turn 12, with little time to argue, Leclerc was told to pit. He rejoined just ahead of Antonelli — exactly the scenario he had hoped to avoid. Within moments, Antonelli lunged into the banked Hugenholtz corner, clipped the Ferrari, and ended Leclerc’s race.

After climbing out of the car, Leclerc was blunt. “I think that was unnecessary,” he said. “We can never know what could have happened, but honestly the tires felt good.”

The clash highlighted a familiar tension between the Monegasque’s instincts behind the wheel and Ferrari’s conservative strategic calls. By pitting, Ferrari neutralized Antonelli’s undercut but also placed their driver directly into his rival’s attack window — with disastrous results.

Kimi Antonelli visited Ferrari’s motorhome after the race, presumably to apologies for his incident with Charles Leclerc... pic.twitter.com/VuE1DVcPC9
— Autosport (@autosport) August 31, 2025

It was Antonelli’s mistake that he ran into Leclerc after losing control of his car, it ‘ruined’ Leclerc’s race and Ferrari’s weekend as Lewis Hamilton had also suffered a DNF a few laps earlier. The young Italian rookie was penalised for the incident and he even visited the Ferrari motorhome after the race to apologise to Leclerc.

As Ferrari look ahead to Monza, the incident will serve as another reminder of how fine e margins are in modern Formula 1, and how costly it can be when strategy driver intuition falls out of sync.

This article first appeared on Athlon Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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