Leclerc retirement caused by qualifying crash
Ferrari says that Charles Leclerc’s retirement from his home Monaco Grand Prix was caused by his crash in qualifying. The team were not initially sure what led to the left-hand driveshaft hub failure that caused Leclerc to lose drive after he left the pits pre-race.
Following an investigation on Monday at the teams base in Maranello, the Italian manufacturer confirmed it was a consequence of Saturday’s accident. Ferrari says they will update their procedures for future races.
The failure cost Leclerc the chance to start his home race from pole position, and cost the team, who have not been able to compete with title contenders Mercedes and Red Bull at other races this season, what could be their only chance to win a Grand Prix this year.
A spokesman said that the failure was a part that was on the opposite side of the car that would not have been inspected after a crash. The crash inadvertently secured his pole position because it removed the possibility of other drivers beating the fastest time he had set on the first of two runs for each driver in the final qualifying session.
The stewards did conclude that it was an honest mistake caused by trying too hard, and there was no evidence he had crashed deliberately. While Ferrari concluded that they didn’t need to change parts including the gearbox which would have given him a five-place grid penalty.
However, they admit the incident has been “a lesson learned” and the team will instigate new procedures in the future to try to avoid such a situation arising again. the part did not immediately fail when Leclerc started driving the car, but the twenty-three-year-old lost drive in the tunnel halfway around the lap on his way to the grid.
FIA looking at deleting times of drivers who cause red flags
The FIA are going to look at IndyCar’s rule deleting times for drivers who cause red flags in qualifying and deem its suitability for F1 after Charles Leclerc’s crash during qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix.
Leclerc took pole position after topping the first runs in qualifying, but on the final runs in Q3 he crashed on the exit of the Swimming Pool which prevented many drivers from attempting to improve. In America, series such as IndyCar and IMSA sees any driver causing a red flag in qualifying lose their fastest lap times.
Despite missing out on the chance to beat Leclerc because of the red flag, Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas said after qualifying they saw no reason for F1 to review the rule. But Mercedes CEO Toto Wolff thought it would be “intelligent” for F1 to give the move some thought, as it would “avoid confusion”.
Asked by Motorsport.com if F1 would give any consideration to introducing a similar rule in the future, FIA race director Michael Masi said it would be reviewed as part of his team’s regular debriefs. Masi said, “Like everything when everything arises, the FIA, Formula 1 and the teams look at everything and consider it on its merits.”
“Yes, I know the IndyCar rule, which is also a rule in a number of other FIA international series and domestic championships around the world. We’ll look at it and, together with all of the key stakeholders, determine if it’s suitable or not.”
Leclerc was placed under investigation by the stewards, but they ruled quickly deciding it was “quite clear” that Leclerc had made a mistake at Turn 15.
“Having looked it, looked at the data and also listening to the team communication, I don’t think any driver would go out there to severely damage their car to that degree, in any circumstance, because of the consequences that may arise out of that,” Masi said.
However it is not the first time a car has crashed after securing pole position in Monaco, Michael Schumacher was thrown out of qualifying for parking his car at Rascasse in 2006 in a deliberate move, while Nico Rosberg’s off at Mirabeau in 2014 was cleared by the stewards.
Mercedes “unites and come back” to fight – Hamilton
Sir Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes will “unite and come back and fight” after a chastening Monaco Grand Prix which saw them overhauled by Red Bull in both the drivers and constructor’s championship.
The seven-times champion struggled with his tyres all weekend leaving him to finish in seventh, while his teammate Valtteri Bottas retired because of a cross-threaded wheel nut during his pit stop. While inevitably disappointed with the result, there was no sense of panic from Hamilton for a team on a run of seven successive championship doubles.
Mercedes said they would hold “open and honest” talks in the coming days during their debriefs to get to the bottom of the issues and come back stronger. Hamilton told Sky Sports, “here is a lot that we could have done better in terms of how we prepared coming into the weekend.”
“We’ve had some good conversations through the weekend, but it’s not good enough from all of us. We win and we lose as a team and it’s collectively not a good job from all of us. We don’t take it lightly but there’s no point getting all depressed, we’ve got to start looking at the data and figuring out why we are in this position.”
Hamilton says the team wants answers and would be working to ensure that these weekends don’t happen again, he pointed out that the team has always bounced back following tough weekends.
Writing on social media, he added, “Each and every person in this team is feeling it and we’ll do what we have always done. Unite and come back and fight!.”
Hamilton lost his lead of the driver’s championship for the first time since Hockenheim in 2018, the Englishman is four points behind. However, says Mercedes “definitely can’t afford another weekend like this.”
He says there was a long way to go but the team definitely can’t afford another weekend like this.
George Floyd one year on
One year on from the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Sir Lewis Hamilton has said the world must continue to work for equality to honour the legacy. Last month the police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter by a jury.
Floyd’s death became the catalyst for the social justice movement in sports last summer. Hamilton, a seven-time F1 champion and the sport’s only Black driver, has become a leading voice in calling for an end to racial injustice. It also became coupled with the pandemic, as BAME people have been more likely to die from coronavirus partly caused by inequities.
Last year he set up the Hamilton Commission, aimed at creating a pathway for people from ethnic minority backgrounds to Formula One. While Mercedes and F1 have made their own commitments to improve representation from underrepresented groups, as part of We Race As One.
On Tuesday, to mark the first anniversary of Floyd’s death, Hamilton posted a tribute on social media and said the work cannot stop.
He wrote: “What does justice mean for a daughter who lost her dad? For a woman who lost her partner? For a man who lost his brother? What does justice mean when a man’s life is stolen because of nothing more than the colour of his skin?”
“George wasn’t supposed to die that day. One year later, the impact of his life and its unfair ending remains with us. Today, we will mourn George and keep his loved ones in our prayers.”
In 2020, 1,127 people in the US were killed by police, according to data collected by Mapping Police Violence, a research collaborative that uses a variety of state and regional databases to determine the number and nature of most but not all police-involved deaths.
The majority of them being BAME or non-white.
Norris explains nerves over track
Lando Norris says he was made “extremely nervous” when he was told he had used up his two track limit warnings by lap seven of the Monaco Grand Prix. The FIA introduced new track limits rules for the Novellue Chicane which meant drivers would be shown a black-and-white warning flag after cutting the corner twice, while a third offence would likely result in a time penalty.
Norris managed to skip across the kerbs twice early on in the race, and that left him on the verge of a penalty for the remainder of the afternoon. Speaking about the corner cutting, Norris said “I missed the first apex part, the first part of the right and I still went to the left of the second one and lost time in both. Both times I locked up there, but I think by about lap seven I had used both my opportunities to go off the track which I’m sure made my engineer Will extremely nervous.”
“I’m sure it made certain other people very nervous too. So not an ideal start to the race, especially because I knew there were many more laps to go and the final stint, when you can be pushing more, if I made one more mistake and went off I would have a five-second penalty and [Sergio] Perez would be ahead of me.”
Norris also struggled with the hard tyres during the closing stages of the race, which he says made it easier to lock up and more difficult on the hard tyre.
He says that the car was much easier to lock up made him have not a lot of confidence in the car and that why he told his engineer “to be quiet, because sometimes you just want to focus on what you need to be doing.”
McLaren surprised by pace in Monaco
McLaren says it never expected to be so fast at the Monaco Grand Prix, where Lando Norris took his second podium of the season. The British team expected to have a more difficult weekend but found itself closer to Mercedes and Red Bull than at other races this season.
Naturally, the team were delighted with how the race played out and McLaren are continuing to build its grip on third in the constructors’ championship. Seidl told Motorsport.com. “I would say we definitely didn’t expect that in terms of pace, that we could be so close to Mercedes, Red Bull, and also Ferrari.
“We have seen since the beginning of the season, and in the first races, we were always struggling in the low speed sections, so that was really encouraging to see this weekend.”
“So a very big thank you to the team back home, in engineering and production to give us this car for this weekend. They did a great job over the winter with this car and they kept pushing and delivering the upgrades.”
The podium was important when after qualifying it was expected Ferrari would have scored a load of points with Charles Leclerc starting from pole. However, his crash in qualifying led to his drive shaft breaking on the way to the grid, while Carlos Sainz finished just one place ahead of Norris.
Seidl admitted that there had been a big danger of a big points swing towards Ferrari, that thankfully his team had avoided. Saying “For the championship, how the race played out was obviously a good outcome for us because, seeing the strong pace Ferrari had on Thursday and also on Saturday, yes there was high risk to lose a lot of points to them.”
Stoker launches 2021 election campaign
FIA deputy president Graham Stoker has entered the race to succeed Jean Todt as president of the governing body ahead of the Novembers presidential election on a joint ticket alongside nine-time Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen.
Stoker, a British barrister, is a former president of the Motor Sports Association and has been a member of the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council since 2004. He has been deputy president since 2012 and is currently in his second term.
Stoker has assembled a leadership team that includes Kristensen, who is standing as deputy president for sport. Thierry Willemarck is again putting himself forward as deputy president for mobility, while Brian Gibbons aims to continue as president of the FIA Senate.
Kristensen has had a successful sportscar career. He has won more Le Mans races than any other driver in history and, following his retirement from racing in 2014, he took over as president of the FIA’s Drivers Commission at the start of 2016.
Speaking as he launched his campaign under the ‘FIA for All’ banner, Stoker said: “I want the FIA and our Member Clubs to gain global influence across all aspects of sport and mobility, emerging transport and energy trends.”
“We will build on the outstanding work of President Jean Todt over the last 12 years and are proud to have been able to help introduce many new innovative programmes and resources to support Members and have assisted the President in developing our Clubs and building the FIA into a strong, respected and influential international organisation.”
