Scuderia Ferrari’s F1 team representative Mattia Binotto acknowledged the dark reality of engine-related reliability issues experienced at the 2022 F1 Round 8 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Sunday’s F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix was a nightmare weekend for Scuderia Ferrari. Pole sitter Charles Leclerc finished the race on lap 21, when he was the victim of a power unit failure. On lap 8, teammate Carlos Sainz also retired due to hydraulic problems.
Also, the retirement of Ferrari’s engine customer Kevin Magnussen of Haas F1 Team and Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu may be related to the engine, causing concern.
Shortly after the race, Mattia Binotto revealed that there was no immediate response to explain the failure that had a major negative impact on the team.
“We still need to analyze and understand,” said Mattia Binotto.
“I think we can do it with two cars. They had different problems. As for Carlos, we’ll look at the hydraulic system and hopefully we can identify it.”
“As for Charles, it’s certainly related to the engine, and I think it’s very obvious with smoke. Is it a problem that happened in the past? I don’t think so, but maybe so. To our customer team I’m also investigating what happened. “
“But I don’t think telemetry data alone will give a clear answer to the problem. The components will be sent back to Maranello, aiming to be disassembled, understood and fixed as soon as possible.”
“Is it something like quality, reliability, or other uses? I don’t know yet, but if you have a lot of reliability issues, I’m sure there are issues.”
“I think I said it before I came here in Baku. As with performance, reliability is always a key factor in the fight.”
“As a team, we pushed a lot to develop the car last winter. We have proved that the reliability is not perfect yet. There is still some work to be done.”
Mattia Binotto suggested that the disorder is likely due to a variety of causes and requires a variety of corrections.
“Not all of these issues are the same,” explained Mattia Binotto.
“Some may be fixed very quickly, but I’m not sure yet. To be honest, I think it will take some time to analyze to understand.”
“Maybe some of the problems are the same as in the past, others aren’t.”
Mattia Binotto also needs to investigate the retirement of Haas F1 Team and Alfa Romeo.
“Maybe Zhou’s retirement has nothing to do with our supply component,” said Mattia Binotto.
“But again, there’s something to note. Overall, it’s always useful no matter what’s happening there.”
“The reason we provide our customer team is not for the business, but for the technical feedback.”
“So whatever’s happening, it’s certainly useful. We’ll spend as much time analyzing those components as we do for the components in the red car.”
Category: Category: F1 / Ferrari / F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix