Ferrari trio on a forgetful F1 Canadian GP in double retirement, as they hope all the bad of the season took place in Montreal itself.
Everything had to go wrong for Ferrari in F1 Canadian GP. A double knockout in Q2 left them to start in the mid-pack and already the start didn’t go as per the plans. While Charles Leclerc gained off the line, Carlos Sainz dropped back.
But Leclerc’s gain didn’t matter with the power unit issue that popped up from Lap 2 onward. He dropped outside the Top 10 as a result and started to get eaten up. A gamble of slicks when rain arrived the second time and a power cycle didn’t help either.
After further laps, Leclerc eventually retired with the power unit sent to Ferrari base in Maranello. There was no fixed amount of time that he lost as it was over one second. In terms of horsepower too, he lost about 80 of it during the grand prix.
Leclerc tried different things on his steering but none worked. He also noted that their qualifying strategy wasn’t a problem but lack of pace for whatever reasons was. Teammate Sainz had less fortune too, as he was stuck behind a train of cars.
He lost his endplate after a contact with Valtteri Bottas in the hairpin and eventually had a spin on his own to retire where he even collected Alexander Albon too. He hopes it is a one-off, as does Ferrari boss Vasseur who added his bits on the situation.
He hopes all the bad that had to happen to Ferrari took place in Canada itself. Additionally, he could understand the frustrations of Leclerc whose response to things was slightly different to that of his teammate Sainz.
What transpired –
Leclerc: “I don’t know what happened. I think it was six-tenths [per lap], but then some laps it was 1.2 seconds, sometimes it was 1.5 seconds. Every time I went on power, I did not know what I would get. First of all, it was very difficult to drive. It was very frustrating because on the straights I got overtaken by everybody. And it was very annoying, because I had 10 or 15 switches per lap to change to try and reset everything and to try to make it work. But in the first part of the race, I think we did quite a good job managing that.
“Because we were in wet conditions, we could recover in the corners, so I was still believing we could finish in the points. And then as soon as it dried up, I was still lacking in the straights. Everywhere whenever I was going into power, there was an issue. I found it a bit better when it was fully wet. The tricky part was when it was half dry, half wet, you’ve got to look at your steering wheel. Then you’ve got only one line and if you are off by two or three centimetres, you are done. That was very tricky.”
Strategy chances –
Leclerc: “It felt annoying, but at the end that was the best we could do at that point. I knew we would finish out of the points whatever happened with that issue, so we had to try something with the slicks. I was more frustrated about the whole situation and the engine performance in the straights, than the actual choice. Because if that was working out maybe that was our only chance to maybe finish 9th or 10th and without that working out or staying in the position we were in before we will have lost the only point.”
Q2 strategy –
Leclerc: “I mean, again, there was, I think, lots of people have asked me this question, but we had used one more set compared to the others and we had no sets left at the end of Q2. So the only thing we could have done is maybe to put scrub at first and then the new. But to be honest, when you look at everybody, It wasn’t making a huge difference. I mean Mercedes did the pole on scrubs. So I don’t think that was the biggest problem I think the biggest problem was mostly the fact that we were on fast whatever laps we were doing on whatever tires We were slow and this we’ve got to look into it. I think it’s more tire preparation once again because We have seen some really good surprises of some teams and some others that weren’t as good including us.”
Nothing worked, spin –
Sainz: “Honestly, it was one of those races where the pace never clicked. Obviously we had some damage in the car from a couple of contacts that we had during that crazy race but there was never really enough pace to make any overtakes, only when we went on slicks there towards the end of a race I started to feel there was maybe potential for some points and I was starting to become a bit quicker and yeah, it was just trying to take some risks to overtake people in the DRS trains to try and be close in sector two, probably touch maybe the wet. I don’t know.
“It’s a very strange way that I lost it there in mid-corner and ended our race. So yeah, just a very weak, very disappointing weekend for the whole team because we never seem to find a good race pace. The last seven races and the last one race. I think Canada was a bit of a one-off, a bit of a special one and we need to understand what happened as a team. There was clearly something the others were doing in qualifying with the tyres to prep them better. For us in the race, really we were just stuck in the midfield and we were not able to make any progress.”
Both faced issues –
Vasseur: “On one side of the garage with Charles, we had, on lap two, we lost part of the power massively. We were expecting a red flag to do a power cycle and to try to come back. But the red flag never happened. We had a red flag in Monaco but not in Montreal. At one stage, we had to pit, we lost almost one lap but it was done. We tried to put the slicks but it was gone by then. On Carlos’ side, he was not in a good position at Turn 2. And at one stage, I don’t remember exactly when because the race was quite long but the contact with Ricciardo or Bottas, it damaged the front wing and the floor. The pace was strong on Friday. Conditions were tricky yesterday and I think a couple of cars suffered the same issue, I won’t go deep into details. But we were quite confident with the race. The issue is the beginning, everything went wrong. I hope that we put all of the tough, shitty parts of the season on the same weekend. But it is like this.”
Issue with the engine –
Vasseur: “It is too early to tell but it is not the engine itself, it is the control of the engine, we had to stop the engine completely and perform the power cycle for few seconds. It was not the best pit stop from us.”
Worst weekend as boss, Leclerc’s frustration –
Vasseur: “It was not the best one but most difficult? I don’t know. For sure, it was not the best one, but sometimes the feeling that everything is going wrong and everything is going against you but we won’t change the approach, we are working as a team with the drivers in the good and the bad moments and we will keep the same approach for next weekend and we will continue together. I am not scared of this kind of weekend but it is what it is, it is racing.
“For Charles, in the car you are fighting in a group, you see that you are missing 10 or 15 kph and you have no chance to overtake, your engineers are telling you that you are losing something like 80 hp, can perfectly understand the motivation, it is difficult to find in these kind of situations. You know that you are in Canada and you won’t overtake with this kind of deficit, I perfectly understand the frustration, if he was not frustrated with these conditions, I would be worrying.”
Here’s how F1 Canadian GP panned out
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