Charles Leclerc avoided ruling out the potential for a grid penalty this weekend with the Ferrari ace in need of more engine components.
The Monegasque was thwarted at last weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix by an engine blowout which ended his race before the half-way point. It was his second DNF of the year, after another in Spain also caused by power unit issues.
He has already used three different turbochargers this year, and so will need a fourth at some point soon. That may come as early as this weekend in Montreal, if Ferrari choose to get their penalty for using more components allowed out of the way early.
Leclerc avoided confirming that would be the case when asked about it in the pre-practice press conference on Friday. "Obviously, we are not in the best situation possible," he admitted, before adding: "There are still ongoing discussions. For now, no decisions have been taken but it is not the best situation to be in."
His assessment of the situation came after Ferrari confirmed that the power unit which had been used in Baku was damaged "beyond repair". The Italian team said: "One possible cause of the failure is that it occurred as a consequence of the PU problem in Spain. We are now working on countermeasures to strengthen the package and the situation is under control."
The failure to finish in Baku was a huge disappointment for the drivers and the team – possibly even more so by the time Ferrari had completed their simulations of what might have happened in the rest of the race. According to their calculations, Leclerc would most likely have "comfortably" won the race ahead of Max Verstappen.
"[Leclerc] was fighting for the lead with [Sergio] Perez and he had Verstappen on his gearbox," said sporting and strategy director Inaki Rueda. "Verstappen got within DRS range of Charles and this is something we have been working on lately. With such small margins with Red Bull, we find ourselves winning or losing games with DRS overtakes.
"For Baku, we took a different rear wing and we worked on our strategy. Crucially, when Carlos stopped we realised it would very likely be a Virtual Safety Car period and we got ready. We got ready with Charles to pit in case race direction thought they had to deploy the VSC.
"This was crucial for our race because a pit-stop under VSC costs roughly 10 seconds less than a normal pit-stop. Because of this, Charles was able to do his only pit-stop of the race with much less penalty than both Red Bulls. So after the VSC period, Charles set off to go to the end on the hard tyres.
"Red Bull tried to go as long as possible on the medium tyres but they were dropping a lot. The medium tyres had a lot of degradation and Perez lost a lot of time trying to go longer and longer to offset himself to Charles. Unfortunately, after 11 laps on the hard tyres, Charles suffered a power unit failure and this cut our race short. Our simulations indicate that had there not been another VSC period, Charles would have won the race comfortably against Verstappen."
