Leclerc had qualified on pole position for the Monte Carlo race but had to wait eagerly to see if he could start from the front, fearing that he might need a replacement gearbox after an accident in qualifying.
Final pre-race inspections confirmed the transmission was OK, but Leclerc suffered heartache during an installation lap when a left rear driveshaft hub on his car broke.
Not having time to replace the part, Leclerc was unable to start the race and had to watch the event from the garage.
Ferrari doesn’t believe the driveshaft failure was related to a problem with the transmission, but they still have no answers as to why the problem wasn’t discovered before the car left the pits.
Team principal Mattia Binotto said analyzing both vehicle data and actual parts at Maranello this week should provide the answer to whether or not Ferrari could have acted sooner.
“On our part, we need to understand what really happened and why it happened,” said Binotto. “And even more, if we could have discovered it on Saturday afternoon and racing morning in Parc Ferme.
“It’s more important to really understand why we didn’t find a problem with the car. The problem wasn’t there when he left the garage, so the problem started at turn six.
“The parts that went into the car showed no problems, so we’ll be looking at the parts and checking the data over the next few days.”
Binotto firmly believes that the driveshaft failure was completely independent of the team’s decision to go for the gearbox, and believes it would have broken anyway even if Ferrari had put in a replacement.
“It has nothing to do with the gearbox,” he said. “If we had changed the gearbox, these parts would still have been on the car because they weren’t damaged in the accident.
“The failure would have happened anyway, so it’s not about playing with the gearbox at all.”
Also read:
F1’s Parc Ferme rules allow teams to replace any parts damaged during qualifying.
Ferrari’s inspection of the car did not suggest any problems with the driveshaft components, so these parts were left on the car.
Binotto added: “There is a clear rule that only damaged parts can be replaced.
“So the parts that we changed were really damaged: the front fender, the front right suspension, and the rear right corner. They were clearly damaged, and we got permission to do that, so that’s it.”
But although the drive shaft failure is not related to the transmission, Binotto has not ruled out that the failure is a consequence of Leclerc’s qualifying crash.
“At some point it could be related to the accident,” he said. “It’s something that we have to analyze and finally find the final answer. But it was on the other side, the other corner. But here too, maybe not related or maybe yes.”
The post The Leclerc drive shaft would have failed with a new gearbox first appeared on monter-une-startup.
