Defeated, yes. Concerned, too. But not downcast. This is how things are at Ferrari.
Mattia Binotto wants answers and will investigate what has happened in Baku. He goes far beyond zero points for the constructors’ title, his drivers not finishing the race. The four cars that did not finish all had motors Ferrari.
“Until today we have taken many steps forward and now we have run into a problem that we must solve,” Binotto stressed.
“At the beginning of the season we did not get excited and now we are not going to get down. It is clear that the performance improvement of the power unit has been enormous compared to last year. We are paying for it with a reliability that is not 100% and to win, the reliability must be perfect, not only of the engine but of the whole car”, commented the boss of the Italian team.
Charles He broke the engine when he was in charge of the race and had a lot of chances to win. Kevin Magnussen abandoned due to engine problems in his Haaswhich lost power. Guanyu Zhoucon Alfa Romeowas the first withdrawn from the race, called by the team when detecting a breakdown. Carlos Sainz It was due to a hydraulic problem.
“We don’t know the cause of Charles’s engine failure. We have to analyze and understand. The smoke tells us it was an engine problem. Is it something we had in the past? I don’t think so. We need to analyze it and also the engine problems. Sainz and our clients,” Binotto said.
But the doubt persists. Leclerc already broke the MGU-H and damaged the turbo in Barcelona and now this second episode takes place, two Grand Prix later. Already in the preseason there were some problems with the engine. The cause must be investigated to prevent it from recurring.
Binotto believes that the investigation will take time. “I don’t think that by looking at the telemetry we will find the answer. Engine components will be shipped to Maranello and disassembled to see what went wrong and try to understand why.
“Is it something that depends on quality, reliability, anything else or use? I don’t know yet, but when you have so many reliability problems, obviously we have to worry,” said the Ferrari boss.
Binotto wanted to point out that during the past year and this winter “a lot of effort was put into the power unit, which was completely redesigned. Our engineers have done a fantastic job. But that also means that we still have little experience with it and that We still need to make progress on reliability.”
“We have a good potential for improvement ahead of us,” he insisted. But this incident will perhaps slow down the planned developments in the engine. This may be more serious than the fact that Leclerc and Sainz have to penalize positions in some races, since at the end of the season, the development of the engines will be frozen… until 2026, when a new regulation comes into force.
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