Sainz 'concerned' by Ferrari reliability woes

Sam Hall
Thursday 16 March 2023 15:22 - Updated: 15:24

Carlos Sainz has conceded Ferrari is 'concerned' about its reliability problems with Charles Leclerc set to take a 10-place grid penalty in Saudi Arabia.

The Scuderia is already feeling the bite of F1's strict power unit regulations with the team confirming that Leclerc will take a third Control Electronics this weekend, putting him one beyond the limit for the 23-race season.

This came after the Monégasque was forced to change the component ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix - a race he failed to finish due to an engine failure.

Speaking ahead of the Saudi Arabian weekend, Sainz said: "For sure, we are relatively concerned.

"It is not the way you want to start the season, with a penalty in race two.

"The battery issue in the first weekend, we are not happy with that and we identified this as a weakness but it is the first time that we have seen this failure in a very long time, so it caught us by surprise.

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Ferrari in a 'bad situation'/h2>

"We are putting things in place to fix it and we're pretty sure that we are capable of fixing that in the short term.

"For now, it's a bad situation but we can only look forward, fix it and make sure that we are more competitive this weekend."

Asked if Ferrari had suffered any further problems at a Pirelli tyre test between events, Sainz added, "No."

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