Giovinazzi engine failure a concern for Ferrari

Ferrari Formula 1 chief Mattia Binotto says the failure of Antonio Giovinazzi’s updated engine is “a concern” heading to this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Ferrari introduced its updated-spec engine at Spa last weekend, opting for its usual tactic of giving it to its customer teams, Haas and Alfa Romeo, before putting it into its own cars at the following race.

Alfa Romeo driver Giovinazzi was sidelined by an engine failure towards the end of Q1 on Saturday at Spa, forcing the team into a change for the race.

The incident also sparked concerns for Ferrari, with Binotto confirming after the race that the team would follow its usual procedure of evaluating the engine back at Maranello.

“That’s a good point, no doubt. We got it, and obviously we need to analyse what happened,” Binotto said.

“As an early failure, normally it should be down to something wrong, quite detectable. The engine will go back to Maranello. First they will need to disassemble it, and try to understand.

“We’ve got a few days to react, but yes, it is a concern.”

Ferrari was not alone in experiencing a failure with its updated engine at Spa, with two of Mercedes’ customer engines – one on Sergio Perez’s Racing Point car; the other on Robert Kubica’s Williams – hitting trouble over the weekend.

Mercedes F1 chief Toto Wolff said the setback compromised the senior team – which ran the updated engines immediately – slightly, but that it did not want to take any risks.

“We introduced Phase 3 of our power unit and we had two failures on Checo’s and Robert’s cars which are not understood,” Wolff said.

“It didn’t compromise us massively, it did a tiny bit. We were not taking any risks in the race but it was certainly not a comfortable situation.

“The failures looked to be different and are not analysed of yet and understood.”