Ferrari Admit ‘Genuine Mistake’ After Hamilton and Leclerc Are Disqualified
Ferrari have admitted they made mistakes that led to Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc being disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday. It was a disappointing end to the weekend for the team, especially for Hamilton in only his second race with Ferrari.
Hamilton had finished sixth and Leclerc fifth in the race, which was won by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri. But three hours after the race finished, both Ferrari drivers lost their results following a post-race inspection of their cars.
Officials found two clear problems. Hamilton’s car had too much wear on the floor skid block—it was 0.5mm below the legal limit. Leclerc’s car was also underweight by 1kg, which is against the rules. Both drivers and Ferrari staff spoke to the stewards. Afterwards, the sport’s governing body, the FIA, confirmed that Ferrari had accepted responsibility. “The team acknowledged there were no special reasons for the problem. It was a genuine mistake,” the FIA said.
Ferrari released a statement soon after, admitting their errors. “Car 16 [Leclerc’s] was underweight by 1kg and car 44’s [Hamilton’s] skid wear was 0.5mm too low. We will learn from today and make sure it doesn’t happen again. This is not how we wanted to finish our Chinese GP weekend.”
In both cases, Ferrari were very close to the limits. Teams often push the rules to get the best performance, but this time Ferrari got their calculations wrong. “With Lewis’s car, we misjudged the wear by a small amount,” Ferrari said. “There was no plan to gain an advantage.”
The team explained that Leclerc’s problem came because they changed his race strategy. Instead of two pit stops, they only made one. This caused more tyre wear and made the car lighter by the end of the race. “Charles was on a one-stop strategy today and his tyre wear was very high, causing the car to be underweight,” Ferrari said.
Other teams, like McLaren and Mercedes, also changed strategies during the race but managed to stay within the rules.
