Ferrari piles up bad news ahead of a new Formula 1 date: Leclerc sanction and resignation of an engineer

Ferrari kicked off the World Cup Formula 1two weeks ago in Bahrain, without podium and with the abandonment of Charles Leclerc and in the days leading up to the second round in Saudi Arabia, the bad news piled up in Maranello.

The Italian team suffered the surprise resignation of its chief designerat the same time her star pilot skipped steps to meet directly John Elkann, the president of the Scuderia. And he has arrived in the paddock the first penalty of the year: Ten positions for SF-23 number 16 in Sunday’s race due to power unit changes.

In the midst of that landscape , Frederic Vasseurwho took the place of Mattia Binotto at the helm of the team in February, asked for calm: “It’s not because we didn’t win the first race that this is a disaster”.

It cannot be said explicitly that the departure was a disaster but it is worrying, even more so with the sanction announced this Wednesday.

In the first test of the year, Charles Sainz He finished fourth and Leclerc gained a position at the start and was Max Verstappen’s escort until the Red Bulls marked their supremacy and the battery of the SF23 of the 25-year-old from Monaco gave way with 39 of the 57 laps of the Bahrain GP.

When you look at the stopwatch, the frightening data emerges: the 48 seconds that the two-time champion, inexorable candidate for the third title, stole from the Spanish Sainz and that it took more than a second with whoever was under the eighth time.

Even if within Red Bull his adviser Mark Helmut considers that “the Ferrari engine is the most powerful in general”, indoors the Italians had a difficult week. Far from waiting for the second appointment focused on the Jeddah road map, they faced the resignation of their chief designer, David Sánchez, the media scoop on Leclerc’s meeting with Elkann and the fine for the Monegasque driver.

Mattia Binotto’s red circle

There has been a lot of talk about what appears to be a implosion in Maranelloafter the departure of the French engineer David Sanchezwhich has been added to the recent gino rosé AND Jonathan Giacobazzifrom the management and promotion area, and the decision to run a Inaki Ruedawho was in charge of strategies, del pit lane to take it to the factory.

As reported, Sánchez made the decision to leave the team after ten years on the jobin which he came to lead the aerodynamics department in 2019 and was promoted to chief engineer in 2021 to take care of the design and development of last year’s F1-75 and the current SF-23.

His immediate future would come McLarenwhere he worked between 2007 and 2012, while his replacement in the Italian team will be just a “patch” for nowbecause it will come from one of his subordinates.

However, his would not be the last farewell to Maranello. In the midst of a renovation, the newspaper Corriere della Sera recently reported that Laurent Mekiesthe deputy director of the Ferrari Formula 1 team and the person who accompanied Binotto in recent years, e Henry Cardilethe head of chassis development, might as well leave.

“I would have preferred to start as Red Bull and not with a retirement -clarified those who hypothesized a month ago-. I’ve never seen a car that could match another’s pace in qualifying and fail to repeat it in the race. It was a matter of set-up.”

And he added: “I warned the team two weeks ago that the World Cup wouldn’t end in Bahrain. The result doesn’t count, what matters is having a clear picture of our situation and identifying our mistakes to have a better analysis and come back as strong as possible“.

Also, Vasseur told about it there are “appointments scheduled after Imola” -on May 21st-as happened “after the pre-season tests with the pilots, together with John (Elkann) and Benedetto (Vigna)”, while surf his first seizure as main team Ferrari.