Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has admitted that reliability problems for the Italian side’s power unit have been “worrying” for Maranello.
The Ferrari boss is aware that reliability will play a crucial factor in the fight with Red Bull for the 2022 Formula 1 World Championships, and confirmed the team need to carefully look into the issues after Charles Leclerc’s race retirement from a comfortable lead in the Spanish Grand Prix and also several issues encountered by the customer teams in this start of the 2022 Formula One season.
Charles Leclerc was dominating the race in Barcelona when he had to retire due to an engine issue, giving the lead of the championships to Max Verstappen and Red Bull.
A failure of Charles Leclerc’s MGU-H and turbocharger were the cause of his DNF at the Circuit de Catalunya, which means that the Monégasque has lost one of each, given the fact that drivers are only allowed to use three internal combustion engines, as well as three each of the hybrid ancillaries such as the turbo, MGU-H, and MGU-K during the current campaign.
At the same time, Charles Leclerc is not the only Ferrari driver to have suffered from power unit problems: Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas is already onto his third Ferrari turbo and MGU-H after less than half of the races in the 2022 championship – the former Mercedes driver will receive a grid penalty once he will need a fourth of either element.
Condidering that there are still 15 races to go this F1 campaign, Mattia Binotto admitted that reliability will be one of the main challenges in order to be able to successfully challenge Red Bull during the year.
“Reliability is always a concern,” the Ferrari boss said, when asked about this matter.
“And when something is happening, it’s never great. So it’s worrying us. We are looking at what happened [in Spain]. And sometimes you’ve got straight explanations. It can be caused by external accidents. It can be caused by exceptional, let me say, circumstances. So other ones may be a true worry and concern”
Asked to provided more details about the issue which led to Charles Leclerc’s Spanish retirement, Mattia Binotto opted of course to remain tight-lipped: “What can I tell you? Not much! We did the analysis. We failed and damaged both the turbo and the MGU-H, so they will not be repaired. Obviously, we found the root cause; we fix it for Monaco, for the next races, and that’s all the detail I will tell you.”
“Reliability has been a key factor so far in the championship because we failed in Spain, and I think for Red Bull as well – they’ve got three DNFs, we’ve got one,” he said. Our customer teams have got some as well. So it’s as much a challenge as performance – reliability is certainly a big challenge, and reliability, when you’ve got concerns, it’s never obvious to fix them in a short time. So yes, it is a concern. It doesn’t mean that we are too concerned, I hope Christian [Horner] is more than myself! But let’s do our best job from now to the end of the season and, hopefully, everything will be smooth and clear.” – Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto concluded.
Leave a Reply