Charles Leclerc Hit With Huge Penalty After Miami GP Stewards Rule Against Ferrari Driver
The stewards at the 2026 Miami Grand Prix have handed Charles Leclerc a 20-second post-race time penalty, ruling that the mechanical damage his Ferrari sustained on the final lap did not justify the multiple occasions he left the track and gained an advantage. After glancing the left-hand side of his Ferrari against the wall on the last lap, Leclerc was left unable to negotiate right-hand corners properly and ultimately finished sixth, costing himself what he acknowledged would have been third or fourth place. The stewards’ document, issued at 17:21 local time on May 3, confirms that Leclerc’s car spun at Turn 3 on the final tour, hit the wall, and continued.
According to the ruling, Leclerc himself reported to the stewards that the damage forced him to cut chicanes rather than negotiate them normally. The stewards’ conclusion was that the mechanical condition was not sufficient justification for repeatedly leaving the circuit and benefiting from it, in breach of Article B1. 8.
6 of the FIA F1 Regulations. The penalty is a drive-through converted to 20 seconds added to his elapsed race time. A five-second penalty would not have changed his classified position, but the 20-second sanction is enough to drop him below Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton into eighth.
The Stewards Considered the Unsafe Car Question Too The document also reveals the stewards examined whether continuing to race with a mechanically compromised car constituted a separate offence in its own right. They found no evidence to support that charge, so no additional penalty was applied on those grounds. It was a narrow escape on that front.
Three separate post-race investigations had been opened against Leclerc, covering the track limits breach, the unsafe car question, and an allegation of causing a collision with George Russell . Leclerc himself had already been forthright after the flag, telling media he had put “a very strong race in the bin” in the space of four corners. “It’s all on me.