Ferrari, in the spiral of fear: two fateful months of errors and breakdowns

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A red tarpaulin still covered

's car in the Parc Fermé in Baku when the Monegasque tried to compose himself before the microphones.

For the third race in a row, Ferrari had let a valuable opportunity slip away and Leclerc's body language did not match the calm tone of his words.

"Obviously I don't have the full picture of what happened today, but on a personal level, again, it hurts," the driver admitted, barely containing his anger.

The 34-point margin against

is already double his 17-point margin against

.

Since the Australian GP, ​​when Leclerc added his last victory of the year, Ferrari has entered a negative spiral of results and sensations, while Red Bull was consolidating, step by step, its new project.

It's not just about having scored 95 points (compared to 224 for the Austrian team) but about the loss of performance and the mistakes on the asphalt.

And this double abandonment, the first since the 2020 Italian GP, ​​adds another element of concern.

"We are concerned about reliability, it is a key factor,"

boss

admitted after Leclerc broke on lap 20.

"Last year we took a big step with the hybrid system and during this winter we focused on the combustion engine. Now it seems that this is taking its toll on us," added the Italian, who will have to squeeze the next few hours in search of a provisional solution .

665 km less than Red Bull

And it is that on Friday, the SF75 will have to start again in the first free session of the Canadian GP.

This temporary rush, added to the freezing of the engines until 2025, make miracles impossible.

"We will try to manage what happens, but we will not be able to correct the structural problems," Binotto acknowledged.

At the moment, the first permission requested from the FIA ​​to work on reliability does not seem to have worked in Maranello.

According to calculations circulating in the

, the Ferrari power unit would be the most powerful on the grid, developing 5.4 hp more than Honda and 10.8 hp more than Mercedes.

However, this advantage collides with recurring breakdowns, which relegate the

to last place in the ranking of kilometers completed (3,334), 665 less than Red Bull and 787 less than Mercedes.

"It's being difficult to get some positive inertia, because I can't link two races without something happening," admitted

, whose SF-75 ran aground before the first quarter of an hour in Baku.

"I need to do more laps," added the Spaniard, whose lack of connection to the car resulted in a handful of errors.

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To the seriousness of this problem we must add what the time table dictated this Sunday.

And it is that just before the first

, Leclerc had already lost almost 2.5 seconds against

, while he barely resisted the position against Verstappen.

Sainz, meanwhile, was the only one of the leading four who had not even been able to go below 1:49 in those first nine laps.

"He wanted to take care of the tires to go longer," claimed the man from Madrid.

Logically, Red Bull was not going to miss its opportunity to throw gasoline on the fire either.

"They stopped Leclerc very early and I think the stint on the hard tires would have been too long," said

Austrian team boss

To this prognosis, Verstappen added another scathing touch.

"We had incredible pace and I think I could also have closed the gap if Leclerc had continued in the race," slipped the defending champion.

"It's the third disappointment in a row and it's not easy to accept," Leclerc concluded, recalling perhaps the 46-point lead he had left Melbourne with.

Leclerc's path to his first World Cup seems increasingly steep.

And he himself accuses the wear.

Three weeks ago, after breaking the engine in Barcelona, ​​the Monegasque didn't hurt garments when it came to encouraging, one by one, his mechanics and engineers.

Seven days later, an erroneous strategy ruined his chances at the home Grand Prix, from which he left in a bad mood.

This Sunday, quite simply, he did enough with biting his tongue.

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