They promised them very happy at Ferrari at the beginning of the season, when they signed a double in Bahrain, the first round of the World Cup. But the truth is that things have been getting worse for the ‘Scuderia’, which although it entered the Spanish GP as the leader of the constructors’ championship, after the Baku appointment it is already 80 points behind a Red Bull that has proven to be the most reliable team on the grill.
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The abandonment this Sunday at the Azerbaijan GP of Carlos Sainz in the early stages of the race and, from Charles Leclerc when he was leading, he has turned on all the alarm lights again. The man from Madrid explained that it was a hydraulic problem that left him out of the fight at turn nine. It was his third zero of the season.
For his part, the Monegasque, who had regained the lead lost at the start, had to return to the pits on lap 20 due to a power unit failure and white smoke coming from his car. “We were leading the race, I was managing the tires well, we just had to manage the tires and the race to the end, which I think it was…we were definitely in the best possible position to do it. Another DNF: it hurts…”, he explained. Leclerc after the race, assuming that they will have to investigate what the problem was to prevent it from happening again.
And it is the second time between three races that the Principality driver has problems with his car. It already happened to him at the Spanish GP when problems in the power unit of his F1-75 forced him to retire while he was in front. A hard setback that ended in the next appointment with a sixth place in the Monaco GP, the home one.
Both in Barcelona, as in Monaco and in Baku, Leclerc He started from pole but was unable to finish. The Ferrari guy is not good at starting from first place. He has achieved it up to six times in these eight races and only in two, Bahrain and Australia, he was able to win.
Work in Maranello The double abandonment was something that the ‘Scudería’ had not suffered since Monza 2020. Moreover, since Australia 2009 the two cars had not been left out due to a mechanical problem.
Within the team they call for calm and commitment to continue working. “I’d rather have good performance and try to fix reliability than the opposite,” explained the Ferrari boss, Mattia Binotto who advanced that they would not have time to make structural changes before the appointment in Canada.
And while the Italian press describes the Prancing Horse race in Baku as a ‘disaster’, others, such as the president of the Italian Olympic Committee, Giovanni MalagoThey call for optimism.