Picture Credit: Twitter
In the latest development, Ferrari's Formula One world championship leader Charles Leclerc has retired as he lost power in the middle sector.
After taking the first position in most parts of the race, he was well on course to continue his good performance in the Spanish Grand Prix. In this season, he had not finished anything lower than the second position, except in one race.
On Lap 27, Leclerc began screaming into his radio, “No, no, no… what happened? I lost power.” The picture became clearer in the Lap 28 when he finally stopped. This was just the second time, that the same engine was used for Leclerc’s race. Thereafter, Max Verstappen won the race in a dramatic manner and took the Championship lead.
After the completion of the race, Leclerc trails 6 points from Verstappen in the 2022 Driver’s standings, with the latter having 110 points.
In an interaction with the media, the Ferrari driver reckoned that they can’t afford the power failure for another time and hopes to find a solution to this problem. He thinks the tyre management has been a major issue in the last two races as well.
“I don’t know anything more than what happened basically,” said Leclerc. “I had no indications before and then it just broke, lost the power completely. So it’s a shame. In those moments I believe that there’s nothing else I can do but look at the positives and there are plenty this weekend. There’s the qualifying pace, the race pace, and most importantly, the tyre management that has been a weakness in the last two races,” Leclerc told to media.
“I think we have definitely found something this weekend on that, so it gives me the confidence for the season. But on the other hand, we’ll look at this issue, and we cannot afford for this to happen many times during the season, so we need to find the problem,” he added.
In the end, Leclerc thinks the team has performed well and hopes to find better results in the Monaco Grand Prix is scheduled to take place on May 29.
“What is the most important is the overall performance, and performance-wise, we are performing very well. So I can’t wait to go at home next week and hopefully we’ll have a great result,” he concluded.