Carlos Sainz admits that reliability is a concern at Ferrari, while teammate Charles Leclerc hits out at "completely unfounded" rumours surrounding the team.

On Wednesday, team boss, Frederic Vasseur confirmed that Leclerc will receive a 10-place drop after Ferrari replaced the Energy Store and Control Electronics on the Monegasque's car ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix, only to see him retire from the race with an electrics-related issue.

"On Sunday, we had two different issues," said Vasseur. "The first one was on the Sunday morning, when we did the fire up, and the second one was in the race. Unfortunately, it was two times the control unit, the ECU."

The failure meant that Leclerc missed out on an almost certain podium finish, and in the aftermath the Italian team has found itself at the centre of an incredible media storm, with talk of a number of senior staff members looking to leave the Maranello outfit.

Unfortunately, speaking at today's FIA press conference, Sainz could do little to lift the mood, admitting that reliability is a serious concern.

"For sure we are relatively concerned," he said. "It's not the way you want to start a season, with a penalty in race 2 and breaking the battery, the ECU in the first weekend.

"Clearly we are not happy with that and we identify it as a weakness," he continued. "But this is the first time we've seen this failure in a very, very long time, so it caught us by surprise. We're putting things in place to fix it and I'm pretty sure that we were capable of fixing that in the short term.

"It's a bad situation," he admitted, "but now we can only look forward and improve."

Meanwhile, Leclerc has hit out at the "completely unfounded" rumours surrounding the team since Bahrain.

"Honestly, I obviously saw these rumours and then went to Maranello, so at first I was like 'oh I'm not sure how the team will react to it' but then we had a meeting with the whole team, with all the Ferrari employees.

"Everyone is fully on it and fully positive still, which is great," he continued. "We all need to push in the same direction as I said this is the most important."

Asked about the claim that he had demanded a one-to-one meeting with Ferrari president John Elkann, he said: "This is absolutely untrue. There have been loads of rumours around the team, which, for once, 90% of them were completely unfounded.

"I don't know from where it is coming from and to be honest I don't want to even spend any energy on trying to find from where it's coming from. We just need to be on it and focus on ourselves.

"It's only the first race of the season," he insisted, "and we've still got many more races to go. We still need to be fighting like crazy to be back at the top and keep pushing.

"When it's Ferrari who doesn't go as well as it should then there's lots of voices and all of these things around the team but we need to be good at spending our energy right inside the team, pushing in the right direction and making a difference and come back stronger. I feel this has been the case in the last few weeks so I'm really looking forward to be being back on track, stop the talk and get back to driving."

Check out our Thursday gallery from Jeddah here.

LATEST NEWS

more news >

LATEST IMAGES

galleries >

Click to go to the main galleries section

READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Defiant, 16/03/2023 17:48

"To be fair, after one race it's just not accurate to say they are unreliable, lets give them a few more weekends before we rejoice... errr, sorry, I mean, listen to or pay attention to the rumours.

I fear the reds are just sucking the life and successes out of two good drivers, just the same as they did for so many drivers before. The romance of driving for an iconic name has wasted many years of drivers who could have won elsewhere at that time. Teflonso, Vetel, Berger, Alesi to name a few."

Rating: Positive (2) Rate comment: Positive | NegativeReport this comment

2. Posted by alvarezh3, 16/03/2023 17:48

"Apparently (not an official info) the ECU and battery problems or Leclercs' car was due to a faulty wire harness on the chassis. It could well be, as the other three Ferrari engined cars didn't have any problems.

Now on to fixing the REAL headache.....the tire wear issue!"

Rating: Positive (1) Rate comment: Positive | NegativeReport this comment

Sainz admits "concern" at Ferrari reliability

LATEST NEWS

RELATED ARTICLES

LATEST IMAGES

POST A COMMENT

Post your comment

READERS COMMENTS

Share this page