Scuderia Ferrari ran the power units of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz’s F1-75 cars at normal power during the Canadian Grand Prix at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, team principal Mattia Binotto confirmed.
Following a great start to the 2022 Formula 1 season, the Italian side’s performance was affected by several reliability issues, most notably when it comes to their engines, which has allowed Red Bull to gain a solid advantage on both the Drivers and Constructors’ championship.
As a direct consequence of the power unit issues, Charles Leclerc had to take another hit, this time in the form of a grid penalty for the Canadian Grand Prix, while both of their customer teams, Alfa Romeo and Haas, are also close to engine penalties. On Friday, ahead of the first two free practice sessions in Montreal, the Maranello team replaced every component of the power unit except the turbo, the component which had broken down in the previous event at the Baku City Circuit, resulting in an initial 10-place grid penalty.
The following day, ahead of the third practice session, Ferrari mounted a new turbo, which meant that Charles Leclerc would begin the race from P19. The Monegasque driver was able to recover to P5. As for his Maranello team-mate Carlos Sainz, the Spanish driver also used a new engine, the third of the season and started from third place, behind the Red Bull of Max Verstappen and the Alpine of Fernando Alonso and finished second, after unsuccessfully trying to overtake Max Verstappen during the last 15 laps of the race, despite the fact that he set the fatest lap of the Canadian Grand Prix, on lap 63 of 70.
The fact that Carlos Sainz was not able to attempt a pass on the Red Bull car despite using the DRS system, coupled with the fact that Charles Leclerc lost a lot of time behind backmarkers at key stages of the race, had the media speculating as to whether Ferrari, fearing reliability problems had turned the power units down.
Team boss Mattia Binotto confirmed this was not the case: “No, we were in full power,” he said, as reported by the the Italian version of Motorsport – “We did not expect what happened in Baku, because it happened incomprehensibly at very low kilometres, now we have introduced two new power units with Charles so we will have breathing space for some, indeed for many races. Unless there are situations we do not understand, I would say that for the next GPs there will be no worries or rather everything will be under control.” – he added.
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Given the new power unit onboard his Ferrari F1-75 car, Mattia Binotto feels Charles Leclerc can hope of recovering the 49-point deficit against Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship, starting with the British Grand Prix at the Silverstone circuit: “Now we’ve got fresh power units for the next races certainly, and we’ve got four races to the summer break. It’ll be important for him where he can attack and try to recover some points if he can.” – the Ferrari boss concluded.
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