This comes after Leclerc’s SF-25 was found to be underweight, while Hamilton’s skid block wear was deemed over the permitted limit, with the result being disqualification for both Ferrari drivers from the Chinese Grand Prix.
Ferrari were looking at a double points finish when the chequered flag flew in Shanghai, Leclerc having crossed the line P4 and Hamilton P6.
However, their tally for Grand Prix Sunday became zero when both cars were disqualified after the race.
And in a statement, Ferrari has explained what happened to cause these different issues for their drivers, which both inflicted a disqualification penalty.
“Following the FIA post-race scrutineering both our cars were found not to conform to the regulations for different reasons,” Ferrari began.
“Car 16 [Leclerc] was found to be underweight by 1 kg and car 44’s [Hamilton’s] rearward skid wear was found to be 0.5mm below the limit.
“Charles was on a one-stop strategy today and this meant his tyre wear was very high, causing the car to be underweight.
“With regard to Lewis’ skid wear, we misjudged the consumption by a small margin.
“There was no intention to gain any advantage. We will learn from what happened today and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again.
“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.”
Leclerc’s DSQ closely resembles the fate suffered by Mercedes’ George Russell at last season’s Belgian Grand Prix.
Russell thought he had pulled off a one-stop strategy against all odds to take victory, but after the race his car was found to be underweight.
A leading theory at the time was that the unexpected one-stop had contributed to higher-than-expected tyre wear and thus an underweight car, as Ferrari say happened to Leclerc in China.
