27/02/2019
NEWS STORY
Just when it was all going so well, and some were already handing Ferrari the 2019 title(s), Charles Leclerc lost track-time on Tuesday morning due to a technical ussie, while the following morning teammate Sebastian Vettel crashed out due to what is claimed to be a technical failure.
With the left front of the car extensively damaged, not only will Leclerc miss out on much of this afternoon's running, the Italian team has to discover the root cause of the crash.
"Inside the car, I was going into turn three and I had a feeling there was an issue with the front-left corner and then from there it wasn't anything that I could have done to avoid the impact," Vettel told reporters.
"After that, I wasn't in control anymore," he continued, "and went straight into the barriers.
"We are flat-out trying to understand," he said of the incident, "it would be a lot easier if there was a lot of run-off and the car didn't hit anything because now due to the hit it's fairly damaged.
"We have to be very careful in understanding exactly what is the problem," he admitted. "That is what everyone is looking at here at the track and also in Maranello. It's important to us.
"I hit the wall quite strongly and I think the Tec Pro and the wall did their job and the car did its job but of course after the impact, the car was very damaged. That's what also makes it quite difficult to reconstruct what was going on before the impact."
Despite the crash, the German insists; "we're still strong" and "the car feels good".
"We've been exploring a lot of things since day one and I think the last week has been very productive," he added. "Yesterday we could recover some of the track time lost in the morning, so I'm still positive about the car and the feeling inside the car."