Charles Leclerc is at risk of another costly engine failure at the French Grand Prix, Ferrari have admitted.
The Monegasque has already lost dozens of points this year thanks to power unit issues. He looked set to stroll to victory in Spain before his engine failed, before the exact same thing happened while he was in the lead at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Team-mate Carlos Sainz has also been affected by the problem. His latest power unit struggle came last time out in Austria, when he was denied what looked set to be a second-placed finish when the engine caused his car to quickly catch fire.
Sainz has been forced to take a grid penalty as a result of his need for a new power unit and will start the race in France from the back of the grid. And it is a timely reminder to Ferrari that reliability issues can still strike at any time.
"It is always at the back of your mind," admitted racing director Laurent Mekies to Sky Sports F1 . "If you have a few failures from the race lead, you will not forget about them very easily.
"We have lost a few races like that this year. It is a long cycle to get on top of these issues, we know it is not something we can fix overnight so everybody is very united to try to deal with it as best as we can right now. Yes, it is in the back of our minds but hopefully it is something we will be dealing with better and better."
Leclerc was helped onto pole position for the race in France thanks to help from Sainz during qualifying. With position irrelevant for the Spaniards thanks to his grid penalties, he was present simply to help his team-mate to go faster than Max Verstappen.
And that is what happened, with the tow given to Leclerc down the long straights helping the Monegasque to pip his rival to top spot. The tow helped Ferrari to make up for the straight line speed advantage that the Red Bull cars have had all season.
Assessing the cars, Mekies added: "It has been a trend that we have been running slightly more downforce and therefore more drag compared to them. Each competitor looks at the characteristics of their car and tries to put it in the best performance window.
"That is where we felt our best performance window was and straight off it is easy to see. You may get better tyre degradation with downforce but we are more exposed. It has played to our advantage and against us this year. We will find out tomorrow."
