True extent of Charles Leclerc’s engine woes revealed amid Ferrari disaster

Ferrari have revealed just how much a power unit problem hampered Charles Leclerc during the F1 Canadian Grand Prix.

Looking to recover from a dreadful qualifying in which both Ferraris were knocked out in Q2, Leclerc reported an issue with his engine during the early stages of Sunday’s wet and wild race in Montreal.

Despite losing time, Ferrari told Leclerc to keep pushing. After an early gamble to switch onto slick tyres backfired, Leclerc eventually retired.

Following the race, the Monegasque detailed how he was losing over a second on the straights to his rivals and was forced to make 10 engine switch changes a lap in a bid to combat the issue.

“I was losing 1.2 [seconds] in the straights, which was extremely annoying,” Leclerc told Sky Sports.

“And then over that I had like 10 changes per lap on the different engine switch, which was such a frustrating race because you get passed by everybody in the straights.

“In corners you are fast and actually I think the pace was quite strong at the beginning considering the 1.2 off, but with the engine issue, there was nothing we could have done better.”

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur confirmed Leclerc lost “around 80 horsepower for about 15 laps” due to the problem.

“We had an issue on the engine which meant we lost around 80 horsepower for about 15 laps,” Vasseur explained.

“We were hoping for a red flag to be able to do a reset and restart. There was no red flag, so we had to pit which cost us a lap and effectively that was the end of Charles’ race as he was lapped.”

Carlos Sainz also failed to finish following a tangle with Williams’ Alex Albon to compound a truly miserable weekend as Ferrari lost significant ground to Red Bull in both world championships.

“It’s not been a good weekend right from the very beginning,” Vasseur said. “I hope it means we have had all our troubles in the one grand prix and that we will be back in Spain in much better shape.

“We will debrief and look at what we could have done differently. We didn’t expect this weekend to be so difficult especially as our long run pace was good on Friday. It’s a long season, so we will have ups and downs but I hope we don’t have too many ‘downs’ like this.”