Monaco Grand Prix – Charlie Whiting from the FIA explained the issues surrounding the Ferrari’s legality over the weekend.
In recent weeks, rumours have been swirling surrounding how the Ferrari SF71-H power unit has apparently been able to utilise more power by harnessing extra power from its Energy Store layout.
As a result, teams, including Mercedes & Red Bull, asked the FIA to clarify whether what Ferrari were doing was in keeping with the rules. This resulted in the FIA putting extra hardware on the Ferrari for Monaco, in order to monitor their power use and to make sure it was in keeping with the technical regulations.
Charlie Whiting, the FIA’s Race Director, explained to Sky on Saturday that they are fully satisfied with the Ferrari’s legality, but did say that there were some unexplained anomalies at first glance:
“We heard something from a team shortly before Baku, and when we hear things like that, it’s usually from teams who have taken employees from another team.”
“We were asked to have a look at a certain aspect on the Ferrari, and this happens quite a lot. So we had a look, and viewed the data. Like we do all the time to make sure cars aren’t using more power.”
“In this case, it looked a little unusual – the data. A bit difficult to explain. Ferrari use a different Energy Store to anyone else so it was pretty complex. It took a while to work our way through it and to explain the anomalies.
The main point is that the team are responsible for satisfying us that a car complies, and we failed to be satisfied.”
“We didn’t have enough to go to the stewards and say ‘this car doesn’t comply’ but we worked through it with Ferrari, as we have with other teams before.”
“They made a few changes to the software on the car, and monitored them on the first day of practice and now we are entirely satisfied of the cars compliance. We have enough in house knowledge and we had a new guy this year who joined us from an engine manufacturer who was very helpful.”
Ferrari finished P2 & P4 in the race on Sunday, behind the Red Bull Racing car of Daniel Ricciardo.
