‘Must be the water’ - New theory for Ferrari DSQ surfaces
Ferrari admit mistakes led to double disqualification in China as new issue comes to light.
A fresh theory has emerged for Ferrari’s double disqualification at the F1 Chinese Grand Prix.
Ferrari had both of their cars disqualified last time out in China in what proved to be a horror day for the team, representing an early blow to their F1 2025 title aspirations.
Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton finished a distant fifth and sixth on the road in Shanghai but both drivers were excluded from the results due to their cars failing post-race scrutineering checks.
Leclerc’s Ferrari was found to be 1kg underweight, while Hamilton’s car had excessive skid plank wear.
Early theories suggested that Leclerc’s disqualification could have been influenced by the tyres and his one-stop strategy, but Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has revealed another, more unusual, issue which could have been to blame.
“The tyres are only part of the explanation,” Vasseur told French newspaper L’Equipe.
“We also lost a litre of water with Charles's drinking [bottle] leaking. The loss of weight is always an addition of many small factors.”
Curiously, Leclerc reported a water leakage inside his cockpit midway through the season-opener in Australia.
Leclerc’s complaint led to a now-viral “words of wisdom” radio exchange with his race engineer Bryan Bozzi.
Ferrari paid price for taking risks
Regarding Hamilton’s exclusion, Vasseur admitted Ferrari made a mistake in not running the seven-time world champion’s car high enough in China.
“You have to distinguish between disqualification because you're taking risks and disqualification because someone is cheating,” Vasseur explained.
“The aim of the game in F1 is to push yourself to the limit of all parameters, everywhere.
“To get to the last gramme of weight, to get to the last tenth of a millimetre of the skid, to get to the last millimetre of wing deformation.
“So it's certain that the more pressure you're under, the more intense the fight, the closer you need to get to these limits and the more risks you take.”
Vasseur’s comments echoed what Leclerc said in the pre-event press conference on Thursday ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix.
“Obviously whenever you do mistakes you learn from them, especially when they’re costing that much,” Leclerc said.
“Everybody is playing with the limit and trying to be as close as possible to it, but to have both cars underneath [i.e. beyond] it was a big pain, and at the end of the day we didn’t need that. It’s been a very difficult first part of the season, the first two races were very difficult, the pace wasn’t where we expected it to be.
“To lose more points than we already did [through underperforming in Melbourne] hurts the team a lot.”
Lewis Hamilton has ‘absolute faith’ in Ferrari
Hamilton, who won the sprint race in Shanghai, has insisted he has “absolute 100% faith” in Ferrari despite their difficult start to the new season.
The double disqualification in China cost Ferrari 18 points and leaves them only fifth in the constructors’ championship and a whopping 61 points behind McLaren after just two rounds.
"I saw someone said something about whether I'm losing faith in the team, which is complete rubbish,” Hamilton said. "I have absolute 100% faith in this team.
"There was obviously a huge amount of hype at the beginning of the year. I don't know if everyone was expecting us to be winning from race one and winning the championship in our first year.
"That wasn't my expectation. I know that I'm coming into a new culture, a new team and it's going to take time."
Lewis regularly attends Grands Prix for Crash.net around the world. Often reporting on the action from the ground, Lewis tells the stories of the people who matter in the sport.
