Sky F1’s Mark Hughes reflects on the difficulties encountered by Scuderia Ferrari in the first race of the 2019 Formula One season and the possible power unit issues which may have led to the Maranello team’s poor performance at the Albert Park circuit last weekend.
Asked on the reddit.com forum whether the rumours of Ferrari having problems with their power unit are true, given the fact that in Q3 Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean also reported issues and during the race onboards from Sebastian Vettel show massive lift and coast, Mark Hughes explained:
“Could be something in it. Ferrari insisting not, but let’s see. In qualifying there was hardly any difference in inferred power Ferrari to Mercedes, as measured by GPS. Ignore straightline speeds. Low power equals poor straightline, but not all poor straightline is from low power. However, if – as has been speculated – Ferrari was running an aggressive ERS mode to compensate for a mechanical detuning (to keep strain off a problem component perhaps) it’s possible you could have full power over a qualifying lap but not on consecutive laps because you simply empty the battery too soon. So it is possible you’d see it in the race but not qualifying. The Haas problem in qualifying is a red herring – it was an exhaust sensor problem that briefly cut power into safety mode. So in summary, there might be an engine problem but it wasn’t the reason for their lack of qualifying pace. Which was a handling balance/tyre issue, with a poor front end grip (explaining the lack of end of straight speed, because it had poor start of straight speed). But yes there were some odd things about engine performance from Sebastian Vettel, especially as he was trying to defend from Max Verstappen. The story will doubtless become clearer in the following races.” – Sky F1’s Mark Hughes concluded.
