Leclerc's driveshaft should've been checked: "That was an own goal by Ferrari"
- GPblog.com
For Charles Leclerc it was a terrible day in Monaco on Sunday. After securing pole on Saturday it all turned out to be for nothing after what was reported as a driveshaft issue. Afterwards, it seems that Ferrari could have solved this problem.
Leclerc is at the top of the timesheet in Q3 when he goes out for a second run, and takes just a little too much risk. He hits the guardrail at the swimming pool chicane and flies straight into the wall. A huge impact on the right side of the car. Ferrari is allowed to repair it, but on Sunday it appears that they haven't fully succeeded.
Bad luck for Leclerc
"Ferrari were looking for damage on the right side of the car. But if you look back now, we can see that Charles actually contacted the barrier with the left-hand rear wheel. Ferrari have been focused completely on one side, and didn't look at the other driveshaft on the other side," said Craig Scarborough in a video by Peter Windsor.
A big mistake by Ferrari, because the left-hand drive shaft appeared to be broken, causing the gearbox to stop working. Half an hour before the start of the race the problem was beyond repair. According to the technical expert Ferrari could have prevented this by checking the whole car on Saturday evening.
Own goal by Ferrari
"You have to look at Ferrari say well 'you had a big accident here' so why didn't you look take the other driveshaft out and look at it? Ferrari have said they will change their processes going forward. This is very much an own goal by Ferrari over Saturday night into Sunday morning. It's a DNS which could've been avoided," according to Scarborough, the argument of time constraints does not hold either.
''You're not allowed to change parts unless they've been damaged. You can't change parts as a precaution. You've got the evening cutoff in which to finish your work. And then in the morning, they can go back and look at the car. However, each team has a number of jokers per year, where you can continue working in the night under special circumstances. That would certainly have been possible in this case. Therefore is no reason why Ferrari couldn't have done all of this work in the time allowed," Scarborough concluded.