The Ferrari team explained why Charles Leclerc had to retire this Sunday at the Spanish Grand Prix, the sixth round of the F1 world championship.
The Monegasque’s car suffered a power cut when it passed over a rumblestrip, causing the engine to stop abruptly and forcing Leclerc to stop in the middle of the track.
With the Ferrari engine at a standstill, Charles Leclerc was about to get out of the car and began to remove his harness, but in a final attempt, the SF1000 power unit finally restarted.
Charles Leclerc was back on the track, but the Monegasque was no longer strapped in his car and had to return to his pit at low speed to get help from the mechanics. At that point, however, his race was compromised and the team decided to keep the car in the garage.
“It’s a shame we couldn’t finish the race today. I think we would have had a good chance to finish around sixth or even better. “said Charles Leclerc after the race.
“With the Soft, we were pretty competitive and we were fast with the Mediums, which unfortunately we couldn’t show completely because of the traffic. ” explains Leclerc,
“My strategy involved one pit stop, and it went pretty well. Unfortunately, towards the middle of the race we had a problem.
“Suddenly, my screen went off and the engine and the rear wheels stopped. We still don’t know exactly what happened and we are looking for the causes.
“The car finally started up again, but it was already too late to continue my race because I had unfastened my seatbelts and had to return to the pits. ”
Moral of the story?
Don’t buy a Ferrari with Pirelli tyres because the car will stop dead in the middle of the road if you run over a speed bump and if that doen’t ruin your day then the tyres will fall off after 120 lms.
How is it possible that a Grand Prix car can’t drive a whole race on one set of tyres? If F1 is serious about cutting costs, then they should bring the tyre regs under control – tens of thousands of tyres are flown around the world (this year Europe) just to give choice of ten sets of five types to 20 cars – costs could be slashed by making this three sets of two types.
Then we would see who is the better driver – not the better ‘Tyre Manager’.
Why doesn’t F1 have tires that last the whole race? Because then the fastest car will win the race with probability of 1 except in the instance where the driver makes a bad mistake such as spinning out of race. This will be as exciting as watching paint dry. Besides, tire strategies and pit stops turn racing into a real team sport.