01/04/2019
NEWS STORY
Though the team needs to carry out a full investigation, Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto, says it was a cylinder issue that cost Charles Leclerc an almost certain win in Bahrain, and not an MGU-H failure as was originally suspected.
Following the second round of stops, the Monegasque had a 10s lead over second-place Lewis Hamilton, who had previously seen off Sebastian Vettel, however with around a dozen laps remaining the youngster reported an issue which was costing him straight-line speed, leading to the suggestions that it was an MGU-H failure.
As the youngster tried to best manage his car, he was easy prey for first Hamilton and then Bottas, and it was only the intervention of the safety car, following the double retirement of the Renaults, that prevented Verstappen demoting him to fourth.
Not so, says Binotto.
"I don't know where the rumours have come from but there was nothing wrong with the MGU-H," the Italian told reporters.
"We are checking the engine, so we do not have a clear explanation yet of what happened," he continued. "But it is an engine problem, we had mis-combustion on one cylinder but it is yet to be understood.
"We do not know the source of the problem," he admitted, "and the engine will be back in Maranello for careful checks, because when something like this happens you need to take your time to do all your checks carefully.
"The engine was running at the end of the race, so it is still able to run, and we will use it certainly on Friday in China when we will have an entire day to assess its behaviour, functionality and its performance.
"When something like this happens you try to recover any combustion control or you try to change mapping or try to change setting to make sure you can find something better," he said of the issue and how it impacted his driver, "but that was not the case today so we have to manage the race like that.
"I think it has been a brave decision to continue racing in those conditions but at the end it was third place so probably the right decision."
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