Penalties will be inevitable for Ferrari
The double abandonment by Ferrari in Baku is in itself a huge blow in the Scuderia's title race. But with the accumulating reliability issues, the hardest part is yet to come.
So, leading the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after a pit stop under a virtual safety car, Charles Leclerc sadly saw another chance of victory slip away as he witnessed the enormous white plume of smoke billowing from his F175. After his retirement in Barcelona for a similar reason, Charles Leclerc’s spare parts inventory is starting to dwindle.
Monégasque is now third in the championship with a 34-point gap behind Max Verstappen and sees Sergio Perez ahead of him in the race for the title. Unfortunately for him, his championship campaign is likely to be heavily affected by penalties for excessive component changes.
According to Helmut Marko, Leclerc, already seeing himself forced to install his third engine of the year, penalties will eventually come: (e) We want a fair fight, but Leclerc will now install his third engine and will have to change his engine at least once or twice in the future, grid penalties are therefore unavoidable (e).
Similar statements were made by Mattia Binotto, director of the Scuderia: “We will analyze everything, but we will not be able to fix certain problems. We will try to manage all of this, to add new components, but first we need to look at what happened, and then we will take action. Penalties could be considered for component changes, but we will make decisions in due time.”
