After Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari both claimed their first Sprint victory since the format began in 2021, things quickly went south for the Italian team in Shanghai. Both Ferrari cars were disqualified from Sunday’s Grand Prix in a shocking turn of events.
The team’s drivers were thrown out for completely different reasons.
Charles Leclerc‘s car came in 1 kg underweight after the race – the same issue that got Pierre Gasly‘s Alpine disqualified.
Hamilton’s disqualification came down to his car’s floor plank being worn down too much – measuring 0.5mm below the required 9mm minimum thickness.
“Charles was on a one-stop strategy today and this meant his tyre wear was very high, causing the car to be underweight,” Ferrari explained in their statement about Leclerc’s situation.
The team was quick to defend themselves regarding Hamilton’s car issue.
“With regard to Lewis’ skid wear, we misjudged the consumption by a small margin. There was no intention to gain any advantage,” they insisted.
Ferrari’s double disqualification cost them a hefty 18 points in the constructors’ championship. Leclerc had originally finished 5th while Hamilton crossed the line in 6th.
It’s a tough pill to swallow after such a promising start to the weekend with that Sprint race victory.
“We’ll learn from what happened today and make sure we don’t don’t make the same mistakes again,” the team promised. “Clearly it’s not the way we wanted to end our Chinese GP weekend, neither for ourselves, nor for our fans whose support for us is unwavering.”
