Carlos Sainz continues to drag the bad luck of the start of the 2022 Formula 1 season, and it is that, as happened in the Spanish Grand Prix, the Prancing Horse driver will have to change his chassis for the weekend at Silverstone.
When the Ferrari mechanics finished assembling their car, they went through the usual procedure to start the 066/7 engine and check that everything was in order, but from the first roars of the six-cylinder turbo power unit, they saw that something it was not going as it should.
The telemetry showed a problem in the fuel collection system inside the tank itself, repeating what happened in Barcelona and which forced the Maranello team to change the chassis for the spare one on Saturday night after qualifying.
What would have failed would be the first of the three pumps that make up the fuel system, that is, the low pressure booster pump manufactured by Magneti Marelli . There is a second pump that feeds the system, and which is classified as open source (OSC), made by the teams, and a third high pressure supply distributed by Bosch .
The replacement of said pump is too complex a job to do in a circuit garage, so the Italian team’s staff thought that the best thing was to mount the spare chassis that, ironically, should be the one that was competing in Spain. The elements of the car were intact and without problems, so after the change of the pump , it should return to the rotation of the two drivers if the need arose.
Carlos Sainz will have to start the weekend of the British Grand Prix as if nothing had happened, but it is clear that those from Maranello have already set to work from the beginning. However, it is better that this mishap happened sooner, otherwise the Spaniard would have risked missing both of Friday’s free practice sessions at Silverstone.
