Ferrari have admitted they were at fault for the mistakes that led to the disqualification of both their drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, from the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday, in what was a disastrous close to the weekend for the Scuderia and a hugely disappointing outcome for Hamilton in only his second race for the team.
Leclerc and Hamilton had finished fifth and sixth respectively in the race, which was won by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri. However three hours after the flag, and in the wake of the usual post‑race inspection of the cars to ensure they are in compliance with regulations, Ferrari were found wanting over two clearly defined rules.
The skid block on the floor of Hamilton’s car was deemed to have been 0.5mm below the limit, and Leclerc’s car was 1kg below the minimum weight requirement. Both drivers and team representatives were summoned to the stewards and afterwards the Formula One governing body, the FIA, confirmed Ferrari had admitted culpability. “The team acknowledged that there were no mitigating circumstances and that it was a genuine error,” its findings read.
Both drivers were disqualified and Ferrari issued a statement conceding their errors. “Car 16 [Leclerc’s] was found to be underweight by 1kg and car 44’s rearward skid wear was found to be 0.5mm below the limit. We will learn from what happened today and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again. Clearly it’s not the way we wanted to end our Chinese GP weekend.”
The margins for error are fine in both cases and teams will always look to come as close to the limit as possible for performance purposes, but Ferrari acknowledged they had incorrectly calculated the expected wear in Hamilton’s case. “With regard to Lewis’s skid wear, we misjudged the consumption by a small margin,” the team stated. “There was no intention to gain any advantage.”
Ferrari argued that Leclerc had been caught out when the team opted to switch to a one-stop from a planned two‑stop strategy, which affected their pre-race weight calculations. “Charles was on a one-stop strategy today and this meant his tyre wear was very high, causing the car to be underweight,” Ferrari said in their statement. Other teams, including McLaren and Mercedes, also switched strategy mid-race without breaching the regulations.