The spectrum of reliability
“Leclerc’s withdrawal was a shock. We have never had such problems on the dynamic bench, not even at 7,000 km of use”. As Ferrari’s new team principal Frederic Vasseur expressed his astonishment at the knockout technician who prevented Charles Leclerc from chasing a podium in Bahrain that would have been richly deserved by the Monegasque driver, who proved to be decidedly more performing than his boxmate Carlos Sainz throughout the Sakhir weekend.
The reliability of the power unit seemed to be a settled issue at Ferrari since as also underlined by Mattia Binotto, the interventions that had to be carried out after the failures of 2022 were clear. Last Sunday, however, Leclerc once again recorded a zero in which he is not at fault, certainly not the best way to start the run-up to a Drivers’ title that Maranello has been missing for 16 years.
Electrical failure, vibration in viewfinder
“Why do I jump so much?” Carlos Sainz complained over the radio during the Bahrain Grand Prix about a rather accentuated porpoising by the Ferrari SF-23. As analyzed by our Federico Albano the Maranello technicians were forced to stiffen the set-up and to lower the single-seater as much as possible to seek downforce to compensate for the low-downforce rear wing. Obviously the contraindication of this choice was the ‘bouncing’ phenomenon underlined in the race by the Spanish driver.
The vibrations themselves could be the real culprits of Leclerc’s knockout, precisely due to a phenomenon that cannot be simulated on the dynamic bench. As reported by today’s edition of The print the reason that forced the Ferrari to retire is the failure of a component of the electrical system of the power unitbut only the examination of the parts that arrived in Maranello yesterday will provide the exact diagnosis. The origin of unreliability could be the exasperated search for lightness of an SF-23 which has already shown from the tests that several pieces are somewhat ‘deformable’ (the retracted nose, the wagging rear wing are just two examples). The vibrations in a straight line could instead have been the trigger of an inconvenience traceable “to a small element of the control unit, perhaps from a few euros” writes The Republic.
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