Following a double disqualification for Ferrari from the Chinese Grand Prix, the Scuderia has confirmed that reasons that led to the technical irregularities at Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc’s SF-25 in the Shanghai F1 round.
Having started the Chinese Grand Prix from P6 on the grid, Charles Leclerc gained a place at the start, overtaking reigning champion Max Verstappen into Turn 1. However, the Monegasque made contact with his new team-mate Lewis Hamilton in Turn 2, and as a result of the incident he picked up a serious damage to his front wing endplate.
Despite considering a front wing change during the pit stop, Ferrari and Leclerc elected to continue with the damaged part as a longer pit stop would have seen Leclerc fall down the order, and the sprint race saw drivers struggle to complete an overtaking move due to the overheating front tyres and turbulent wake.
In the end, the Monegasque displayed a strong pace, and finished fifth with his damaged front wing. However, the FIA noted after the race that his SF-25 was found underweight during the post-race technical investigation.
The Jo Bauer-led FIA technical group replaced Leclerc’s damaged front wing with a spare part which was 0.2kg heavier, albeit his SF-25 was still one kg under the minimum weight limit after 2.0 litres of fuel were removed from the car.
As for his team-mate, Hamilton was expected to build on his great tyre management from the sprint race, but he struggled in the 56-lap race, and was forced to perform a second pit stop while his rivals completed the race distance with a single stop. The seven-time F1 champion ended up sixth in his second race with the Maranello-based outfit.
However, Hamilton was facing a possible disqualification from the Chinese Grand Prix after his car was deemed to have excessive skid wear, the rearmost skid falling foul of the 9mm minimum mandated by the technical regulations.
The stewards confirmed that both the Monegasque and the British driver have been disqualified from the Shanghai F1 race.
The Maranello-based outfit has now confirmed that excessive tyre wear led to the issue on Leclerc’s car, suggesting that the team had expected a two-stop strategy, but with the hard compound having been strong enough for a single-stop strategy, the team built its calculations on a loss of tyres that occurs with a two-stop approach.
In case of the seven-time world champion, Ferrari has revealed that the engineers made a miscalculation that led to the excessive wear on the plank.
“Following the FIA post-race scrutineering both our cars were found not to conform to the regulations for different reasons. Car 16 was found to be underweight by 1 kg and car 44’s rearward skid wear was found to be 0.5mm below the limit.
“Charles was on a one-stop strategy today and this meant his tyre wear was very high, causing the car to be underweight. With regard to Lewis’ skid wear, we misjudged the consumption by a small margin.
“There was no intention to gain any advantage. We will learn from what happened today and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again. Clearly it’s not the way we wanted to end our Chinese GP weekend, neither for ourselves, nor for our fans whose support for us is unwavering.”
