Charles Leclerc out of Azerbaijan GP in double Ferrari DNF as smoke pours out of car

Charles Leclerc has been forced to retire from the Azerbaijan Grand prix as his car went up in plumes of smoke. The Ferrari man was leading the race after an excellent strategy before his car failed.

The Monegasque was driving down the front straight before a mechanical failure which saw smoke coming from the back of his car. It's Leclerc's second retirement in three races as the team's reliability issues continue.

Leclerc said he believed the issue was an engine failure to his race engineer on team radio. The retirement is a major dent in Leclerc's championship chances after a brilliant strategy call put him in the race lead.

It means he could have thrown away 25 points and a chance to cut the deficit between him and Verstappen to just one point. The Ferrari man stopped under a virtual safety car for the hard tyres to get ahead of the Red Bull pair.

It was predicted he would switch to medium tyres at the end of the race to close in on Sergio Perez and Verstappen.

READ MORE: Ferrari suffer more misery as Carlos Sainz out of Azerbaijan GP

Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after retiring, Leclerc said: "It hurts. We really have to look into that so it does not happen again. I don't really find the right words to describe it. It's very, very disappointing. I don;'t know. We really need to look into it.

"We've been fast and we did have problems in the first part of the season. Now it seems we have a bit more compared to the beginning of the season but we didn't change massive things. If anything we made it better so it's difficult to understand.

"We'll have to analyse. I don't have the full picture of what happened today. Personally, again, it hurts.

"I really don't know for now. I have no news. There's still the disappointment. I