Romain Grosjean revealed the power unit problem which prevented him from taking part in qualifying had been discovered by the team during final practice.
Smoke began pouring from Grosjean’s new-specification Ferrari power unit as he left the garage at the beginning of Q1.
“We had a bit of a warning in FP3 and we tried to change the parts as much parts as we could,” Grosjean explained.“Obviously you don’t have the time to change an engine between FP3 and qualifying. It went in the pit lane. I don’t know exactly what went but something smoked and we had to stop the car.”
The problem first became apparent in final practice when Grosjean began his qualifying simulation on hyper-soft tyres.
“I did the first timed lap on FP3 and then on the charge lap at turn ten something went wrong,” he said. “So we boxed straight away and changed as much parts as we could in the time that we had.”
Grosjean said the upgrade was “very appreciated” and believed seventh place was “in the pocket” for the team based on their practice pace before the failure.
Pierre Gasly also experienced a power unit problem in final practice but was able to take part in qualifying after Honda swapped his new engine for a previous-specification unit.
Honda’s F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe said his engine “showed a drop in power” towards the end of the morning session. “As a precaution, we decided to change the entire unit.”
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Gabriel (@rethla)
10th June 2018, 9:16
They have a keen eye, i also managed to spot it.
Jere (@jerejj)
10th June 2018, 15:24
@rethla I, on the other hand, didn’t, LOL.
bigwilk (@bigwilk)
10th June 2018, 9:24
I wonder why Torro Rosso has enough time while Haas didn’t?
Maybe the last few years with McLaren have given Honda an excellent engine swap manual of nothing else…
Gabriel (@rethla)
10th June 2018, 9:39
Also Toro Rosso got the worskteam readiness for swapping out an engine.
Ronald (@mosquito)
10th June 2018, 10:55
Really surprised to see a new Ferrari PU go up in smoke (at least partly) after just 3 practice sessions. Must be worrying for the Scuderia themselves.
Just as it must be worrying to see for Red Bull that the new Honda PU also has issues already. It gave us a nice comparison and thus leads to the (careful) conclusion the new Honda brings A LOT more power, but does this extra power come at a heavy reliability price?
johntodiffer
10th June 2018, 11:25
A couple of left field ideas sprang to mind when I saw that – Ferrari might have cranked up the settings in the Haas unit to see where the edge is and the possibility that it was a partial failure of the intentional oil burning system. If he doesn’t change his donk the latter is likely.
Vettel fan 17 (@)
10th June 2018, 12:01
On the plus side he can take a new engine but not really suffer from a penalty