During last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, the most successful team in history was ready to celebrate one more victory, but a failure in the MGU-H and in the turbo caused Charles Leclerc to be forced to retire.
From Maranello they assure that they have already solved this setback, although in Free Practice 1 of the Monaco Grand Prix, the Haas of Mick Schumacher and the Alfa Romeo of Valtteri Bottas suffered two failures in the MGU-K that cost them time on the track and forced them to replace your gearboxes for the next session.
The Finn also had a major power unit failure during free practice in Barcelona, and similar things have been reported by other Ferrari-powered teams.
Although he did not go into detail, the red team boss, Mattia Binotto , acknowledged that reliability remains an issue, while noting that its main rival, Red Bull, has also experienced costly breakdowns in the first races of the year. .
“Reliability is always a concern,” the Swiss said when asked by Motorsport.com. “When something happens, it’s never good, it worries us, we’re analyzing what happened, and sometimes you have direct explanations.”
“It can be caused by external accidents or exceptional circumstances, but others can be cause for concern and concern,” Binotto said. “So reliability has been a key factor so far in the championship, because we failed in Spain, and I think Red Bull too, they have three DNFs, we have one, and our customer teams have a few.
“It’s a challenge, just like with performance, and when you have reliability concerns you never have obvious solutions,” continued the Ferrari chief executive. “It doesn’t mean we’re too worried, I hope Christian [Horner] is more than I am!”
“We are going to do our best work from now until the end of the season, and hopefully everything goes well,” explained Mattia Binotto, who is aware of the importance of winning in 2022 after the Italians’ drought.
The director of the Maranello team, despite talking about the reliability of his team, did not want to give more details about Charles Leclerc ‘s problem in Barcelona: “What can I say? Not much.”
“We have done an analysis, we failed and damaged both the turbo and the MGU-H, so they cannot be fixed,” he said. “Obviously we have found the main cause, we fixed it here for Monaco and the next races, that’s all I will tell you.”
Alfa Romeo boss Frédéric Vasseur , for his part, said he was confident that those at Maranello would take care of solving all the problems with the engine: “That is in the hands of Ferrari, and they are taking care of it, I am not worried. to improve the situation quickly.”
