At the start of the Chinese Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc was fighting for position with his Ferrari teammate, Lewis Hamilton. In the very first corners of the race, things got tight. As they both turned into Turn 3, Leclerc’s front wing touched the back of Hamilton’s car. This small contact broke off the left endplate of Leclerc’s front wing.

Even though this damage made his car slower, Leclerc decided not to come into the pits to change it because he wanted to keep his place on the track. Most drivers were planning only one pit stop, and if Leclerc stopped to fix the wing, it would take around eight extra seconds. That would have dropped him behind other cars and he didn’t want that.

His engineer told him the broken wing was costing him about “20 to 30 points of downforce.” That means the car was missing grip and could lose around 0.2 to 0.3 seconds each lap. But Leclerc believed he could handle it.

Speaking to Sky F1 after the race, he explained: “We didn’t want to take the eight seconds at the pit stop of changing the front wing, because then I will need to overtake cars and we were very weak in Turn 12.”

Instead, Leclerc kept pushing. He was still faster than Hamilton, so Ferrari let him go ahead to chase George Russell. He even got close enough to try to pass Russell, but a a lock-up into Turn 14 stopped his attack.

Near the end of the race, the damage started to hurt more. His front tyres wore out quicker, and he couldn’t keep up with Max Verstappen, who passed him later on.

Still, Leclerc didn’t regret his choice. He explained: “I didn’t want to take that risk, I just wanted to keep track position and try to maximise the result.”

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur was also impressed, saying: “With the loss of downforce that we had, the pace was mega… He struggled a bit at the end with the tyres, but overall it was a very strong result.”

However, the story didn’t end well. After the race, the FIA checked Leclerc’s car and found that it was under the minimum weight limit. Because of that, even after all his effort, Leclerc was disqualified from the final results.