Ferrari suspects Leclerc’s driveshaft issue was unrelated to F1 qualifying shunt

Leclerc was unable to take part in his home race after suffering a driveshaft issue on his way to the grid.

Ahead of the race, Ferrari confirmed that the gearbox did not need replacing having found no defects following further checks, meaning he could line up in pole position.

While Ferrari doesn’t fully understand the issue, Binotto suspects it could be unrelated to his crash in qualifying.

“We need to fully understand what happened,” Binotto said. “The failure is on the driveshaft into the hub on the left-hand side. So it's not a gearbox problem we had. The gearbox had been inspected yesterday evening, it has been reviewed, and I think that the gearbox was OK for the race.

“What happened is on the opposite side compared to the accident. So it may be completely unrelated to the accident. But something which we need to carefully understand and analyse, and we have no answer right now.”

Binotto confirmed the team had never encountered such an issue previously: “No, no. Let's wait and see. I think we can only analyse the pieces carefully on the data, try to have a clear explanation.”

Binotto revealed Ferrari hadn’t checked this area of the car because it hadn’t been damaged.

“As I said, it has not been a gearbox failure,” Binotto added. “There was no gamble on the gearbox. We are confident the gearbox would have been OK for the race. But again, what happened needs an explanation that we do not have right now. As I said, we will need to carefully analyse.

“No this was an area that was not checked because it was not damaged.”