Ferrari point finger as statement issued after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc disqualified
Ferrari thought they had taken 18 points from the Chinese Grand Prix but left Shanghai empty-handed instead after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified
Ferrari have admitted that their own mistakes saw both drivers disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix. On Sunday, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc became the first Ferrari team-mates to be disqualified from the same Formula 1 race.
And both saw their results stripped from them for two different, separate rule breaches. Leclerc was the first to be removed from the classification as post-race checks found that his car was under the minimum 800kg weight required.
Soon after, it emerged that there was also a problem with Hamilton’s car. There was too much wear found on the plank fitted to the bottom of his Ferrari, indicating that the ride height was too low.
Both were disqualified, along with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, for breaches of the F1 technical regulations. In the official decision documents, the stewards confirmed that Ferrari had accepted full responsibility in the hearings held over each case.
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They said: “During the hearing the team representative confirmed that the measurement is correct and that all required procedures were performed correctly. The team also acknowledged that there were no mitigating circumstances and that it was a genuine error by the team.”
Ferrari have since issued a statement following the disqualifications. It read: “Following the FIA post-race scrutineering, both our cars were found not to conform to the regulations for different reasons.
“Car 16 [Leclerc] was found to be underweight by one kilogram, and car 44 [Hamilton]’s rearward skid wear was found to be 0.5mm below the limit.
“Charles was on a one-stop strategy today and this meant his tyre wear was very high, causing the car to be underweight. With regard to Lewis’ skid wear, we misjudged the consumption by a small margin.
“There was no intention to gain any advantage. We will learn from what happened today and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again. Clearly, it’s not the way we wanted to end our Chinese GP weekend, neither for ourselves, nor for our fans whose support for us is unwavering.”
Ferrari do, at least, get to keep the victory Hamilton secured in the sprint race on Saturday. The seven-time champion was using a different car set-up for that shorter race and it passed all the usual post-event scrutineering checks, meaning it was a legal car and so he keeps the eight points he scored, while Leclerc added a further four points by finishing fifth.
