Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Baku Street Circuit, 2022

Leclerc to take grid penalty at Canadian Grand Prix after further parts change

2022 Canadian Grand Prix

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Charles Leclerc will take a grid penalty at this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix after his team opted to change another power unit part on his car.

The Ferrari driver suffered a power unit failure while leading the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sunday. The team has fitted new control electronics for this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

By using his third different set of electrics this season, Leclerc will exceed the maximum limit of two. As this is the first time he has exceeded the limit, he will incur an automatic 10-place grid penalty.

Ferrari had already changed the electrics on Leclerc’s car ahead of the first practice session, along with his engine, MHU-H and MGU-K. This was done without incurring a penalty.

During the second practice session Leclerc’s race engineer Xavier Marcos Padros told him he was unable to perform burn-outs in his car due to his turbocharger. This is one of the few parts which has not been changed on Leclerc’s car this weekend, and Ferrari may yet perform a further power unit change which could lead to Leclerc starting Sunday’s race from the back of the grid.

Power unit components used prior to the Canadian Grand Prix

CarEngineDriverICETCMGU-HMGU-KESCEEX
63MercedesMercedesGeorge Russell2222113
44MercedesMercedesLewis Hamilton2222113
1Red BullRed BullMax Verstappen2222113
11Red BullRed BullSergio Perez2222114
16FerrariFerrariCharles Leclerc3333134
55FerrariFerrariCarlos Sainz Jnr2222124
3McLarenMercedesDaniel Ricciardo2222112
4McLarenMercedesLando Norris2222112
14AlpineRenaultFernando Alonso4444334
31AlpineRenaultEsteban Ocon3333223
10AlphaTauriRed BullPierre Gasly3333225
22AlphaTauriRed BullYuki Tsunoda4444225
18Aston MartinMercedesLance Stroll2222222
5Aston MartinMercedesSebastian Vettel2223222
23WilliamsMercedesAlexander Albon2222222
6WilliamsMercedesNicholas Latifi2222222
77Alfa RomeoFerrariValtteri Bottas3332124
24Alfa RomeoFerrariZhou Guanyu2222113
20HaasFerrariKevin Magnussen3333224
47HaasFerrariMick Schumacher2322224

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2022 Canadian Grand Prix

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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13 comments on “Leclerc to take grid penalty at Canadian Grand Prix after further parts change”

  1. This is a rule they can scrap, IMHO: the cost cap already limits the quantity of hardware used by a team. Further more, the team already paid for the extra hardware by getting a DNF. That’s a big difference to what Mercedes did last year: introducing extra hardware to gain performance not available to their client teams.

    1. If I recall correctly, PU’s are exempt from the cost cap.

    2. The reasoning is sound, however races often get more interesting when you have a fast car in the back, many people are against reverse grid races, but they’re good for the show, think about russia 2021, some rain in the end helped but it was already a great race.

      1. I don’t watch this as a show, but as a sport (not that I want it to be dull, just not directed). Rules are the way they are, it’s the same for everybody, but they do make this much more of a constructors than drivers championship (since the driver gets penalized, not the team). I’d rather they pay a fine for this than lose 10 grid spots… If it’s large enough, it’ll be a fine deterrent, especially with the cap.

    3. petebaldwin (@)
      18th June 2022, 2:39

      Does a new engine cost the same for a manufacturer as it does for a customer? If not then that’ll be why they have to keep the limits in place.

      1. As SteveR mentions above, the engine costs aren’t currently part of the cost cap, although they had already been fixed at a maximum of 15 million a year previously

  2. @George.be
    @petebaldwin

    Also too, it’s looking like some of the smaller teams are struggling to even hit the new budget cap which prevents them from spending spree’s on new toys compared to the big boys, so there’s that and like what Pete mentioned; it surely costs much less for the manufacturer than the customer’s cost for new PU bits with creative accounting and material assignment.

  3. I think it’s a bit unfair that when an engine fails you lose all points in that race and then face a race ban. FIA could easily check if an engine really failed beyond repair during a race and allow a penalty free replacement.

    1. *a race penalty.

  4. It’s a real shame Ferrari are having these issues with their engines. We have two cars and driver’s pretty evenly matched yet the championship is looking like it will be ruined with unreliability and grid penalties.
    I’m sure Max knows how Charles is feeling as he nearly lost out on the title last year with the lion’s share of DNF’s. I think the rules for this do need looked at as it inflicts too much pain to have a DNF and a ban. Obviously they should have something in place to protect against what Merc were doing last year with engines to gain an advantage but if they genuinely fail I think the penalties are too harsh.

    1. * ban/grid penalty

  5. Say what you want about Arrivebene… he was a far better operator than Binotto.

    1. That seems to be a pretty fair assessment, but it shouldn’t mean that Ferrari or its fans ignore the (many) shortcomings of the team under Arrivebene either.

      Ferrari in those years had a lot of issues, from repeated horrible strategies that led Vettel to second-guess everything his engineer said, a big issue matching factory data to real data leading to months of wasted upgrades especially throughout 2018, an inability to bring both drivers up to speed leading to Räikkönen taking just one meager win throughout all his many years in his second period at Ferrari, and then there’s the pretty long list of completely pointless intra-team battles that led to numerous first lap bumps between the two Ferrari cars as well as an odd refusal on Räikkönen’s part to play the team game (in Germany and Italy 2018 in particular).

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