Leclerc raced on for two laps without seatbelts!

Charles Leclerc drove two laps without his seatbelts attached in Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix after spinning at Barcelona's final chicane following an engine issue.

Leclerc was battling his way back into the top ten following a pitstop when he spun at the chicane on lap 36 after his engine suddenly shut off.

After receiving instructions from the Ferrari pitwall, Leclerc succeeded in firing up his car and got going once again. But instead of heading into the pits, the Scuderia charger continued on his way only to radio in to signal more engine issues.

"Guys we need to box, we need to box," he said. "When I went for the button to switch the car on again my seatbelts are off now so when I brake I’m moving quite a bit.

"I don’t mind but I’m pretty sure nobody would be happy me driving without seatbelts."

Indeed, F1's rules require a driver to be retrained in hi seat at all times during a race, whether on the track or in the pitlane.

Yet Leclerc undertook a second lap at racing speed before finally heading back to the Ferrari box where he was eventually instructed to shut down his engine, the team subsequently retiring the Monegasque's SF1000.

"There were two issues," Leclerc later explained. "The first one is that the engine switched off, and then I tried to switch it on again.

"When I saw it wasn’t going, when I saw it wasn’t starting again, I took off the seatbelt. Then I had to box again for the seatbelts.

"Unfortunately the race was already over before that when the engine switched off. It’s a shame, but we’ll work to try and understand what went wrong."

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BBC Sport consultant Jolyon Palmer was unimpressed with Leclerc's attempt to press on without his seatbelts properly attached.

"Driving a lap with seatbelts undone in Formula 1 seems like the most dangerous thing you could possibly do," Palmer said on the Chequered Flag podcast.

"You can’t drive in a 30 zone without your seatbelt on, let alone doing 150mph with 19 racing cars going wheel-to-wheel either side of you.

"It’s a really sketchy thing, things could break on the car, you never know what could put you into the wall."

Palmer believes Leclerc was distracted and forgot about his belts when he fired up his engine and rejoined the proceedings.

"He was basically stopped in the perfect place to get back to the pits but he must have momentarily forgotten, driven past the pits, and then thought he hasn’t done his seabelts up," said the former F1 driver.

"The FIA and Formula 1 do good work in improving safety, Leclerc himself was helped by having the halo on the car which was introduced a couple of years ago when he had Fernando Alonso’s McLaren launching into it at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix.

"So to then, with all these safety improvements, do the first lap that I know of in a Formula 1 car without a seatbelt on since the 70s, it’s just not clever at all."

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