Charles Leclerc is soon threatened to receive a grid penalty, following the example of Andrea Kimi Antonelli among others. The Monegasque suffered significant damage to his power unit due to his hard crash at Monza. Ferrari had just brought ADUO upgrades for the component during the Italian race weekend, but could not bring them to Madrid due to the damage sustained. Leclerc hopes that the Scuderia can still save the component: “If not, then a grid penalty will probably follow.”
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The Italian Grand Prix was already over for Charles Leclerc before it had really begun. The Monegasque lost control of his SF-26 in the second lap and crashed into the barriers at Parabolica. Just in the weekend that Ferrari had brought the ADUO upgrades for Leclerc’s engine.
A week later, during the Spanish GP, the new engine was therefore not in the Monegasque’s car. Ferrari’s engineers are still investigating whether the engine can be reused. If that is not the case, Leclerc faces a grid penalty. However, the driver remains confident that his team can save the power unit.
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‘Otherwise a grid penalty’
“As far as I know, they are still investigating at the moment. We will see,” Leclerc told the media with an update on the damaged power unit. “I mean, I don’t know yet. If we can save the component, that’s great. If not, that will probably result in a grid penalty at some point.”
In addition, the Ferrari cars are still behind those of their closest rivals, Leclerc thinks. According to the Monegasque, there is still a lack of pace over a fast lap during qualifying. “I am sure our car is a strong race car, but we just have to try to understand how we can get more performance out of the car in qualifying,” he said. “We know that energy management of the car on Saturday, in my feeling, is even more difficult than on Sunday, and we have no quick solutions for that. But anything we can do to get a bit more performance out of the car on Saturday would be very useful for our race result.”
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