Marc Genet: We had not foreseen any reliability problems

Marc Genet has long been a test driver for Ferrari and now serves as an ambassador for the Italian marque. After finishing the Bahrain Grand Prix, which was not very successful for the Scuderia, he had to admit that the reliability problems that led to Charles Leclerc’s retirement came as a complete surprise to the team.

Marc Genet: “This season starts for us in a very different way than the previous one. Last year we had a great start to the championship, but we didn’t finish it in the best way. Hopefully it will be the other way around this year.

You see, in certain areas we managed to improve because the car was fast and we were able to fight for pole position. But the reliability issues came as a complete surprise to us – we clearly hadn’t anticipated this.

Of course, while we knew we could get in trouble working with rubber, we really don’t do well with this.

We replaced the battery on Charles Leclerc’s car before the race, but that was more of a precaution. Some parameters of the energy storage device were of concern, but we are sure that this is not related to the problem that occurred. It appears that the internal combustion engine in his car failed during the race.

In any case, we understood that the podium is the maximum you can count on. If we had finished in the top three it would have been a great result, but unfortunately we missed it. As a matter of fact, we thought the Soft compound tires would work the worst on our car, but Charles showed excellent pace on them.

But when we switched to hard tyres, which we considered the best option, the speed suddenly dropped. The conclusions we reached after pre-season testing were not confirmed. In general, we counted on the podium, and Charles could best climb, because the outcome of the race upset us very much.

Overall, the team acted bravely, took a creative approach and even made a double pit stop when our riders entered the pits almost simultaneously. At the start, the soft tires allowed Charles to get ahead and stay ahead of Pérez, so it was the right choice.

During the race, Carlos Sainz complained about the car ‘pitching’, and while the nature of this phenomenon was not the same as in the past, it is certainly irritating the drivers and will certainly need to be addressed.

If we talk about Red Bull’s fast pace, it is quite possible that it depends on the characteristics of a particular track. On the straights our car is very fast, this is the strong point of the Ferrari SF-23, although this was not the case before. Therefore, I believe it is very important for our team to succeed in Saudi Arabia, where our car must be capable of excellent speeds – according to my premonitions it will be.

I have no doubt that we can beat Red Bull in qualifying, but we are very disappointed with the rubber degradation. We understand it won’t be easy to get ahead of such a strong opponent, but so far there is only one race left and 22 more Grands Prix ahead.