Charles Leclerc will have to serve a grid penalty in Saudi Arabia this weekend as Ferrari will have to change electronic parts on his car.
Ferrari had to change the Control Electronics and Energy Store on Leclerc’s car before the race in Bahrain, and then during the Grand Prix the Monegasque’s SF-23 lost power and had to be retired at the side of the track.
“On Sunday, we had two different issues,” Ferrari Team Principal, Fred Vasseur, said. “The first one was on the Sunday morning, when we did the fire up, and the second one was in the race. Unfortunately, it was two times the control unit, the ECU.
“It’s something that we never experienced in the past. I hope now it’s under control, but we have a deep analysis on this. Unfortunately, we’ll have to take the penalty in Jeddah, because we have only a pool of two control units for the season.”
The rules only allow teams to have two control electronics units per car without penalty and as Ferrari will be installing a third into Leclerc’s car there will be a penalty coming for the Monegasque driver for the second race of the season.
Changing the electronics will incur a 10 place grid penalty for Sunday’s Grand Prix however it remains to be seen whether Ferrari will alsochange any other parts ahead of the race.
