Scuderia Ferrari brand ambassador and former long-term test driver Marc Gene is confident the Maranello team will be able to turn things around and feels there is no reason why the Italian side cannot pull back their deficit in both championships despite the recent setbacks.
Spanish professional racing driver also confirmed that optimism remains high within the Maranello team as Ferrari feels it can bounc back from their run of bad results starting with the Canadian Grand Prix, after a double DNF for Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix at the Baku City Circuit.
Carlos Sainz was running in fourth place when his race ended on lap nine due to a hydraulic problem, while his Maranello teammate also stopped his F1-75 car ten laps later due to a power unit issue, which was the Monegasque driver’s second such incident in the last three events. This means that Charles Leclerc loses a lot of ground to his Red Bull rival Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship, while Ferrari are also far behind the Austrian team in the Constructors’, ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix.
Marc Gene admitted there is plenty of pain going on at Ferrari after the recent disappointment in Baku: “Every time we’ve had a DNF with Charles, he’s been leading the race,” he said on the F1 Nation podcast – “That is even more painful today [as] we did the right strategy call. But then you don’t see it in the result. So whenever we make a wrong strategy call, we are also leading. Every time we make a mistake, reliability or strategy, we lose 25 points and when we don’t make that mistake, [it’s] not always we win. So [it’s] very painful.” – he added.
The Spaniard feels Charles Leclerc was on his way to winning the Azerbaijan Grand Prix if his power unit had held up until the end of the race, despite the fact that he would have had a tyre disadvantage in the final part of the race, after an early stop for hard tyres during the Virtual Safety Car period for Carlos Sainz’s DNF.
“Of course there are positives. The main one is that was a very high-speed track where you would have thought maybe Red Bull were stronger, and I think Charles would have won the race. The hard tyres, they made it to the end with [Daniel] Ricciardo and [Pierre] Gasly – they did many laps. So we have the pace, that’s the main thing. You want to have the pace and then, from that, you have the reliability. But we were more aggressive than Red Bull. I’m sure it was the right strategy call, so that shows the team is not so influenced about such a difficult week we had after Monaco. But if you think about the championship, and you look now at the classification, it’s a very high mountain to climb. You can do it with a car as fast as ours. But today is something worrying because [it was] not only [us] – two other cars had other issues.” – Marc Gene continued.
Red Bull and Max Verstappen had a poor start to the season, but proved able to quickly turn things around and recover a big deficit after their early-season retirements in Bahrain and Australia, as Marc Gene feels there is no reason why Scuderia Ferrari cannot have a similar comeback in the second part of the championship given the string pace of the F1-75 car.
“It’s incredible how Red Bull have got back so many points. We can do that the same way and with the car we have, for sure we can do that. Now we have to see [what] the reliability issue is. You know, if it’s a one-off thing or it’s something when you have an engine problem, sometimes you have to redesign and produce and it’s not something you do from one week to another. But the good thing is the car is fast on all types of tracks. We went from Monaco to Baku and we got pole and we were the quickest car in the race. So why not get back these 50 points?” – the Ferrari brand ambassador explained.
Show your support for Scuderia Ferrari with official merchandise collection from Puma! Enter the online Puma Store and shop securely! And get your F1 tickets for every race with VIP hospitality and unparalleled insider access. Click here for the best offers to support Charles and Carlos from the track!
The Italian side started the current campain with what seemed like a Ferrari started the season with a bulletproof reliability, until things started to go wrong after the first four races. As a result, Marc Gene was asked if any changes had been made on the power unit front that may have led to the recent issues. While an engine development freeze is in place as of March 1, the only updates which are allower on the power unit front are those specific for reliability improvements. Given the fact that Ferrari’s problems occurred on the second power unit, Marc Gene explained there is no difference between the specifications.
“Nothing’s changed. I remember after winter testing, I said even openly that reliability is one of the strong points of Ferrari. And we are talking about three months ago. So no, nothing has changed. Today, I can tell you, in the telemetry room, nobody was expecting that – it was really an unexpected failure. So now we are gonna analyse it, at least know where it’s coming from. It’s the second engine unit but it’s exactly the same spec as the first one. So it’s not that we brought any reliability updates – the engine is exactly the same.” – he concluded.
Leave a Reply