Canada, Leclerc’s explanation
For Carlos Sainz, the problem for Ferrari in Canada was the pace. Frederic Vasseur and Charles Leclerc, however, tell a different story: the SF-24’s rhythm may not have been at the level of the best, but it was still good enough to easily access the points zone; the Monegasque and the Frenchman blamed the car’s reliability issues, with a power unit that slowed down the Monaco GP winner by at least half a second yesterday. This figure evidently grew: race engineer Bryan Bozzi initially mentioned five-tenths, Vasseur said “eight-tenths for 15 laps,” and Leclerc even claimed a second and a half.
Charles Leclerc’s comments
The truth is known – or will be known – only by Ferrari. Charles Leclerc isn’t making a drama out of it but asks the team to make an effort to solve the power unit issue as soon as possible: “Considering the first stint with the engine running a second and a half slower, I think we didn’t do so badly in the corners. It was just the engine, the problem was so significant that we couldn’t do anything. So, just as we didn’t overreact after Monaco, we shouldn’t overreact after this race, but this Sunday hurts, with two DNFs costing us points against our rivals,” commented Charles Leclerc after yesterday’s Grand Prix.
“I think we shouldn’t be overly critical of the car’s pace: there have been good weekends and bad ones, on Saturday we missed Q3 by three-hundredths, surely we weren’t perfect with the car; we need to work on this and try to understand what went wrong, but I wouldn’t say the race pace was bad.” – the Monegasque driver added.
“Honestly, there’s not much to say, the engine problem cost us everything. At one point we tried to switch to slick tires knowing it would be risky, but we had to try something because with the engine issues, we would have been out of the points anyway. And that’s that,” he concluded at the end of the Canadian Grand Prix – “Then it was extremely complicated to make all the engine adjustments the team was asking for, and at the same time, we were still losing 1.5 seconds per lap. We need to look into the engine problem because it will be complicated for the rest of the season.”
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