As the Maranello outfit has its worst start to a season since 2009, it insists that it will learn from today’s double disqualification.
For the tifosi, not to mention the Italian media, it was bad enough that Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton could only finish fifth and sixth in today’s Chinese Grand Prix, but to have both cars disqualified, for different reasons, will be, understandably, seen as unforgivable.
While the Monegasque was disqualified for his car being underweight, his teammate forfeited his position due to excessive wear to his skid-plate.
While Alpine accepted its disqualification almost immediately, it was some time before Ferrari reacted, admitting responsibility for the double misdemeanour.
“Following the FIA post-race scrutineering both our cars were found not to conform to the regulations for different reasons,” said the Italian team in a statement.
“Car 16 (Leclerc) was found to be underweight by 1 kg and car 44’s (Hamilton) 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,” the team insisted. “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.”
A first lap collision between its two drivers meant that Leclerc was handicapped with a broken front wing endplate, which, though costing pace, the team was unwilling to change as it would cost the Monegasque track position.
Meanwhile, Hamilton rued changes made to the car following his victory in yesterday’s Sprint.
“We had a pretty decent car in the Sprint,” said the seven-time world champion, “but then we made some changes because we tried to move forward and improve the car and we made it quite a bit worse basically.
“We got into qualifying and then it was even worse in the race,” he added. “So it was unfortunate, but very, very hard to keep up with the guys ahead. But lots to learn.”
Yet again, the team’s strategic calls came under scrutiny, for while Hamilton suggested he move aside for his teammate he wanted to dictate where and when. Then, as Max Verstappen closed in, the team opted to put the Briton on a two stop strategy, one of only four drivers to make more than one stop.
“The pit stop is too long here,” he said of the move, and the inability to retake his position from the Dutchman. “It’s a lot of seconds to catch up and they were still going fast at the end.
“Max was doing something similar to me and I had much fresher tyres,” he added. “So, yeah, it wasn’t great.”
Meanwhile, Leclerc justified the decision not to change his front wing.
“We are speaking about a big loss on my car,” he said of the missing 20 – 30 points of downforce, “so there was, for sure, the potential to do a lot better.
“But we didn’t want to take the eight seconds at the pitstop of changing the front wing, because then I will need to overtake cars and we were very weak in Turn 12.
“That was making us very vulnerable with the cars behind and it was very, very difficult to make any overtakes because on the way up to Turn 14 we were just too far off. I didn’t want to take that risk,” he admitted, “I just wanted to keep track position and try to maximise the result.”
Asked about the first lap collision with his teammate, he said: “Honestly, I think it wasn’t that quick. I mean, it felt really bad. I think we were generally quick, we’ve seen it yesterday with Lewis, myself we saw it towards the end of the sprint where I was very strong.
“All in all, I think we had a really good race car, and today I did a step with the car, and I think that made it a lot better for today.”
Speaking before the double disqualification, team boss Fred Vasseur said: “The positives are the pole of Lewis, the win of Lewis, and I would say the pace of Charles during the race with the front wing damage.
“With the loss of downforce that we had, the pace was mega,” added the Frenchman.
“At the end, overall we finished twenty seconds behind the McLaren with this damage. I think it’s a very good result and very strong result.”
Check out our Sunday gallery from Shanghai here.
