Ferrari believes fourth was possible for Charles Leclerc before his engine problem in the Spanish Grand Prix.
The Monegasque was one of the few drivers near the front to commit early to a one-stop strategy in Barcelona and was running as high as fifth before spinning out at the final chicane.
Thankfully for the rest, Leclerc was able to restart his car and continue but was forced to return to the pits, ending as the only retirement on Sunday.
“There were two issues. The first is that the engine switched off, then I tried to switch it on again,” he explained.
“And when I saw it wasn’t starting again I took off my seatbelt so I had to box again for the seatbelt but unfortunately, the race was already over before that when the engine switched off.
“It is a shame, but we will work to understand what went wrong.”
This season has seen Leclerc be very good at extracting the absolute most from the SF1000 and as his teammate Sebastian Vettel was mired in the midfield train, he was enjoying himself in the fight for ‘best of the rest’ behind the top three.
“To be completely honest, it wasn’t that bad a race,” he acknowledged. “I think we had a good chance to finish around P6 or P7.
“We were very quick on the soft towards the end and then on the medium we were in traffic, but we were planning the one-stop on my side and I think it was working pretty well until the issue.”
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Commenting on what turned out to be an electrical problem that caused Leclerc’s engine to cut, Ferrari head of race strategy Inaki Rueda believes more than P6 was possible.
“Charles looked after his tyres well in the first stint and managed to go to lap 29, thus in the window to switch to a one-stop, given that he had a set of new mediums to use,” he said.
“In fact, only Sergio Perez made the same choice as us, and given the penalty he was given, that’s how Charles could reasonably have finished fourth.
“Unfortunately, a control unit failure put an end to that goal.”
