The Canadian Grand Prix had nothing but disappointment to offer Scuderia Ferrari HP, with both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz having to retire from the race in Montreal. The team and the Monegasque are still second in their respective championship classifications and now everything about this weekend will be analysed in depth to ensure that this race remains the only flaw in a season that up until now had lived up to expectations.
The race. The Grand Prix started on a wet track and things immediately got complicated for Charles as a problem with the power unit compromised his pace. Carlos also had a difficult start from the wettest side of the grid, which caused him to drop several places. Leclerc was in damage limitation mode until a car reset in the pits fixed the problem, but by then he had already been lapped and there was no point in adding kilometres on the car with no chance of scoring points. The team therefore called him back to the pits to retire on lap 40. Carlos was just outside the points for a long time, running in a train of cars, all with DRS. It seemed as though his race might come alive after the rain abated and all the cars had switched to slicks. On Medium tyres, Carlos was up to tenth place and had just set his best lap overtaking Alexander Albon for ninth place. However, on lap 53, the Spaniard was caught out by a wet kerb which sent him into a spin. Unfortunately, the Williams driver was right behind and was unable to avoid clipping the Ferrari. The collision ended the race for both of them, in Sainz’s case because of a broken rear wing and damaged floor.
Next round. The team now returns home after what was, by a long way, the worst weekend of the season so far. Time to recharge the batteries and go racing again in a fortnight’s time in Carlos’s home race, the Spanish Grand Prix at the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit.
Charles Leclerc #16
The bottom line today is that the engine issue is what compromised our race. We were losing substantial lap time compared to the other cars, so we tried to go on slicks, knowing that it was our only chance to try to finish in the points. There was nothing to lose and I’ve got no regrets on that.
This one hurts and it’s a big loss of points for the team with both of us unable to finish. We will look into the issue we had to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
A race to forget for the team. We knew today was going to be difficult because we have been struggling all weekend with grip and car handling. The entire race was on the edge, and when I tried to push in the DRS train to overtake I made a mistake on the kerb and for that I want to say sorry to the team and to Alex (Albon).
We have work to do ahead of Spain to understand what has happened this weekend and make sure we don’t find ourselves again in this situation in the upcoming races. We move on.
Fred Vasseur, Team Principal Scuderia Ferrari HP
This has been a very tough weekend for us. On one side of the garage with Charles we had an issue on the engine which meant we lost around 80 horsepower for about 15 laps. We were hoping for a red flag to be able to do a reset and restart. There was no red flag, so we had to pit which cost us a lap and effectively that was the end of Charles’ race as he was lapped.
With Carlos, he did not get a very good start and so he was in the pack and at one point there was contact in which he damaged the rear wing and also the floor, so it was impossible for him to continue.
For sure, it’s not been a good weekend right from the very beginning. I hope it means we have had all our troubles in the one Grand Prix and that we will be back in Spain in much better shape. We will debrief and look at what we could have done differently. We didn’t expect this weekend to be so difficult especially as our long run pace was good on Friday. It’s a long season, so we will have ups and downs but I hope we don’t have too many ‘downs’ like this.