Ferrari uncovers the cause of the failure of Leclerc’s F1 driveshaft

The Italian team returned to their base in Maranello on Monday morning for a detailed investigation into what had happened to Leclerc prior to takeoff.

The team had given Leclerc’s car and transmission the all-clear in the hours leading up to the race, but a left rear driveshaft hub failed during a pre-race reconnaissance lap. With no time to fix the part before the start of the race, Leclerc had to retire from the event and not take his pole position.

Motorsport.com believes that investigation into the Leclerc problem has revealed that the outage was a consequence of the crash the Monegasque suffered when it hit the barriers in the third quarter.

And although the team checked the car regularly before the race to replace any damaged parts, the left driveshaft hub was not checked in detail as part of this process.

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The team’s regular checklist for critical components, which it investigates and replaces after an accident, contains a large number of components. However, it is assumed to be focused on the side of the vehicle that suffered an impact.

So the right side of Leclerc’s car would have had a more detailed inspection than the left.

Even if the left hub had been on the checklist for a visible inspection, it’s not clear whether the team would have picked it up before the race.

The team’s data suggests that the driveshaft hub worked correctly during the first part of Leclerc’s first lap out of the pits, before failing at Turn 6.

In light of the events related to the failed driveshaft components, Ferrari will now revise and improve its processes to ensure that in repeated circumstances in the future, similar problems will be better identified.

It was clear to Ferrari on Sunday that the drive shaft failure was not related to its decision to use the same gearbox on Leclerc’s car for the race.

Team boss Mattia Binotto said: “The mistake would still have happened, so it’s not about playing with the gearbox at all.”