Ferrari confirm investigation into unseen problem that hurt Charles Leclerc

Ferrari will investigate an engine problem that hampered Charles Leclerc’s progress in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Leclerc finished ninth behind teammate Lewis Hamilton in the latest underwhelming showing from Ferrari this season in Baku.

It has since emerged that Leclerc battled a power unit issue that impacted him early in the race.

Leclerc struggled to make up ground from 10th on the grid after crashing out of qualifying.

"We cannot be satisfied with eighth and ninth. We started behind Norris, and we finished behind him, which is the reality of this track," Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said.

"We had an issue with Charles’ engine, which we will now investigate, and even if it was marginal, it was enough to prevent him from being able to overtake in a straight line, which explains why we were stuck behind Lawson.

"The main regret is for qualifying, because we had the pace to do a much better job, and that’s where the weekend got away from us.

"It’s encouraging that the pace was there, but frustrating that we did not capitalise on it because you have two parts of the job: one is pure performance, and the other is your execution.

"In terms of performance, we made a step forward after Spa, but to be P10 and P12 yesterday was not what we expected. Now we need to understand what we could have done better, because we made some mistakes and some poor choices.

"I know Charles is accepting the responsibility for qualifying, but we need to work on our execution to come back stronger.”

Vasseur would not be drawn on the exact nature of the issue when later questioned about it.

"Charles had the issue on the engine, it was not five times, but it was enough to spend your week behind someone and not being able to overtake,” he offered

"Then the cost is that on the engine, you are losing the two-tenths plus the gap with the car in front of you, and for Charles, it was a lot, I think.”

How the problem impacted Leclerc

Leclerc revealed the intermittent problem affected his car for around 10 laps of the race.

"Unfortunately, I had a quite big power unit issue for like 10 laps in the first stint, and we don’t really know what is the reason for that yet because it kind of came back from one lap to the other and we don’t know what happened," Leclerc said.

"So I need more info about that. It’s not like it’s been there for the whole race, so then I was fine towards the end, but in the phase where I think we probably had the chance to actually overtake cars, I was just stuck in the DRS and very slow down the straight, so I couldn’t do much in that first phase after that.”

After a frustrating weekend in Azerbaijan, Leclerc is hopeful hotter conditions in Singapore will favour Ferrari next time out.

"I think our car is struggling quite a bit whenever it's cold, and we have seen that the Mercedes is performing very, very strongly whenever it's cold,” he added.

“Yesterday, there was one of the only cars that had actually made the medium work in Q3, together with Williams, actually, which are both cars very strong in cold conditions.

"We are stronger in hot conditions, which I hope Singapore will give us that."