Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, and Pierre Gasly were disqualified after the Chinese Grand Prix this Sunday due to technical regulation violations detected during the post-race inspection of their single-seaters. This was a minor issue for Alpine, but a disaster for Ferrari, whose race could have ended much earlier.
The race for the two Ferraris could have ended as early as the second turn when the front wing of Charles Leclerc’s SF-25, destabilized on a curb, broke on the right rear wheel of Lewis Hamilton. This happened even though the two Scuderia drivers had a better start than Max Verstappen, who was positioned ahead of them on the grid.
“I was trying to position myself for turn 3, Lewis was on the outside and I thought he would maintain his trajectory,” Leclerc explained after the race, speaking to Canal+. “I didn’t think he would move back to the inside and he didn’t see that I was there. In short, we touched, which is never what you want between teammates, but we misunderstood each other’s intentions. Fortunately, we were both able to continue.”
There was no puncture for the English driver, but Leclerc lost a piece of his wing and several aerodynamic points, which did not prevent him from maintaining a pace superior to that of his teammate. In fact, the pit wall asked his teammate to make way for him on the twenty-first lap.
Charles Leclerc
“When we have cars in front of us, it becomes more complicated to manage our tires”
The two red single-seaters were still following each other under the checkered flag, while the strategists had differentiated the plans of the two drivers (one stop for Leclerc, two for Hamilton). However, in the meantime, on the 53rd of the 56 laps, Verstappen had overtaken the Monegasque, who was in fifth place.
“It’s difficult, especially in qualifying where we are below the expected performance,” Charles Leclerc emphasizes. “This puts us in difficulty because we saw with Lewis in the sprint race that the performance is there when we start in front. But when we have cars in front of us, it becomes more complicated to manage our tires, to show our level of performance. This complicates life. We need to focus on qualifying, it was our strong point in recent years but we have lost the thread.”
The Report Card of the Chinese Grand Prix: Oscar Piastri Dominant, Ocon Revitalized, Ferrari Punished
This already unflattering assessment was completely overshadowed by the disqualification of both Ferraris after the race. Excessive wear of the plank on Hamilton’s floor, weight below the minimum imposed by the regulations (800 kg) for Leclerc’s car. A tiny bit (0.5 mm below the limit for the first infraction, 1 kg for the second) that changes everything. “Charles adopted a one-stop strategy, which means that the wear of his tires was very high and this resulted in a car underweight. As for the wear of Lewis’s plank, we slightly misanticipated it,” the Scuderia commented to emphasize the absence of any intention to cheat.
Caught for the same reason and with the same margin of one kilo as Leclerc, Pierre Gasly was also disqualified. Without too much regret since he had again failed to score points (11th, as in Melbourne), leaving Alpine as the only team with zero points after two races. The consequences are quite different for Ferrari, which only has seventeen points on the counter. That’s already 61 behind McLaren. A chasm. As if its two cars had retired in the first round.
