Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur welcomed Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli coming to him to apologize for a crash which sent Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc spinning into the wall at Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix.
Leclerc came out from a pit stop ahead of Antonelli, who tried to pass Leclerc on the inside of a tight banked corner but clipped his rear wheel and sent the Ferrari into the barrier.
Leclerc had been in contention for a podium place earlier but instead watched the end of the race from a sand dune trackside.
“He came to apologize to Charles. Charles was not there, but he came to me. And honestly I appreciate this,” Vasseur said.
“It’s not so easy to overtake in Zandvoort. It means that you have to take a risk. He took a risk. He made a mistake.”
Leclerc said he believed the incident was an honest mistake on a track where overtaking is difficult, and refused to chalk it up to Antonelli’s inexperience.
“I wouldn’t describe it as a rookie mistake. I think it’s just a mistake which can happen in the first year or the fifth year,” Leclerc said. “On a track like this you need to be aggressive [to overtake], but that was too much.”
Leclerc hit the wall in almost the same spot as his teammate Lewis Hamilton had crashed out earlier in the race, sliding wide on a track which had become slippery during a rain shower. It was the first time neither Ferrari driver scored points since their double disqualification at the Chinese Grand Prix in March.
However the pain didn’t end there for Ferrari. Hours after the race, Hamilton was handed a five-place grid penalty for next week’s race at Monza — the team’s home grand prix — for failing to slow enough under yellow flags during the formation lap.
Leclerc, meanwhile, escaped a penalty from a collision with George Russell that was ruled a racing incident by stewards.
What had been a promising race for the out-of-form Antonelli ended with the Italian finishing outside of the points for the seventh time in nine grands prix. That was because of a 10-second penalty for colliding with Leclerc and another five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane.
“I was feeling good in the car and just a shame to have missed out,” the 19-year-old Italian driver told broadcaster Sky Sports.
“For the contact, obviously it’s on me. I tried to avoid it, especially when I saw he was coming back in front, but it was not enough. So obviously I feel sorry to Charles and to the team and now we move forward.”
