Charles Leclerc has blamed the design of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez for his clash with Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton on Sunday.

Leclerc was penalised for leaving the track in Mexico, but only accepts limited blame for the incident.

Charles Leclerc blames circuit design for corner cutting

Leclerc was handed a five-second penalty for an opening lap incident involving Ferrari teammate Hamilton.

After the pair went wheel-to-wheel through the Turn 1-2-3 complex, Leclerc pulled level around the outside of the entry to Turn 4. Although both drivers ran off the track, Hamilton returned to the asphalt before Turn 5, losing a place to Max Verstappen, while Leclerc cut across the grass and assumed the lead.

Ahead of the race, drivers had been informed that gaining an advantage by running off the track on lap one would carry a 10-second penalty. But with the mitigation of Hamilton also running wide, an action which it could be argued forced Leclerc off, the sanction was reduced to five seconds.

While the problem of corner cutting is not exclusive to Mexico, it is most noticeable there, with chicanes making up much of the first half of the lap.

“I think honestly, I mean, we’ve been speaking about it all Thursday at the drivers’ briefing, trying to understand in which way we should best take a decision with that,” said Leclerc.

“I think the conclusion of everyone is that we first need probably to change the tracks and make sure that there are no places or tracks where you can take that amount of risk on the inside.

“If there was obviously a wall at the exit of turn four, neither Lewis nor I would have pushed the braking point that much.

“So I think there are some things that we can improve track-wise in order to make it more simple because otherwise it’s very complicated.”

Analysis: Mexican Grand Prix

The case of Mexico is a curious one. Grass or any surface other than asphalt is often enough of a deterrent to stop drivers from pushing the boundaries, but even with the change of surface in this example, drivers often pay little mind to it.

The issue of track limits is one that carries over from the United States Grand Prix, when there were well over 200 violations across the weekend, despite the width of the white lines being increased to allow some extra wriggle room.

Asked about his driver’s comments, team principal Fred Vasseur said: “It would have been worse in Monaco.

“The layout of the track for sure, it’s not helping because, if you have a look, the last couple of years we had this kind of issue. But it can’t be an excuse at all.”