23/05/2021
NEWS STORY
Ferrari team boss, Mattia Binotto says the driveshaft issue that meant Charles Leclerc could not start today's Monaco Grand Prix was not the result of his crash in qualifying.
The Monegasque went into today's race feeling confident after checks last night and again this morning revealed no lasting damage following yesterday's crash.
However, heading out to the grid Leclerc slowed and reported an issue, the youngster claiming it was his gearbox.
Speaking in the moments after the race however, team boss, Mattia Binotto said the driveshaft issue was not the result of the crash and wasn't even on the same side of the car as the impact with the barriers.
"We need to fully understand what happened," Binotto told Sky Sports. "However, 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 has been inspected yesterday evening," he continued, "it has been rebuilt, and the gearbox was OK for the race.
"What happened is on the opposite side compared to the accident," he explained, "so it may be completely unrelated to the accident. But something on which we need to carefully understand and analyse. We have no answer right now."
Asked if it was an issue Ferrari had previously encountered, he said: "No. Let's wait and see. I think we can only analyse the pieces carefully on the data, try to have a clear explanation.
"As I said, it has not been a gearbox failure," he insisted. "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 analyse."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Monaco, here.