Lewis Hamilton not to be blamed for first lap mishap says Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc clarified that the opening lap clash at the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton was not his teammate's fault. The Monegasque driver and his new teammate made a good start to the race as the duo passed the slow-starting Red Bull of Max Verstappen.

However, Leclerc spotted an opportunity to further move a place on Hamilton and get to P4 but unfortunately had his front wing endplate chopped off by the latter. The damage meant that the 27-year-old had a loss of around 20 to 30 downforce points and would leave him dealing with a lot of understeer.

The damage had a significant barring on the performance but Charles Leclerc had more pace than Lewis Hamilton and ultimately got past him after the team's instructions.

Speaking with Sky Sports about the collision, Charles Leclerc discussed the contact with Hamilton and said:

"Honestly, it's not Lewis' fault at all. On my side, I was around the inside trying to position the car for Turn three and Lewis didn't know I was there, I did not expect Lewis to come back taking the apex at the moment he was on the outside, at the end it was a racing incident."

Further mentioning that it was not an unsurprising contact as such incidents were frequent in the sport, Leclerc added:

"It's not the first or last time it will happen. It's a shame that it happens between the two red cars but obviously there were no bad intentions from either of us. So that was unfortunate and obviously it cost me quite a bit for the rest of the race."

Charles Leclerc finished P5 on the track ahead of Lewis Hamilton by two seconds despite the latter having an extra pitstop.

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Charles Leclerc details the loss of performance owing to front-wing damage

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc said that the front wing endplate damage caused him a loss in performance and left him unable to extract maximum performance out of his SF-25 at the Chinese Grand Prix.

As quoted by the aforementioned source, the Ferrari driver felt he could've achieved a better result if not for the damage sustained to the car.

"We are talking about a big, big loss on my car," Leclerc said. "There was the potential to do a lot better. We didn't want to take the eight seconds at the pit stop for changing the front wing because then I would have needed to overtake cars."

"We were very weak in Turn 12 and that was making us vulnerable to the cars behind and it was difficult to make any overtakes. I think we did well, a shame obviously for the damage."

However, the collision did not have any significant implications on the result of the race as both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were disqualified after failing the FIA's post-race checks for having an underweight car and excessive plank wear respectively.

The disqualifications meant that the Italian team lost 18 points in the Constructor's Championships and fell 61 points behind McLaren.