2 weeks Ago
Ecclestone, 94, shared this insight after meeting Montezemolo at Eric Clapton's 80th birthday celebration in London over the weekend. "I met up with Luca there," he told his long-time Swiss journalist friend Roger Benoit , a veteran contributor to Blick newspaper. "He (Montezemolo) was appalled by the two disqualifications in China," the diminutive Briton asserted.
"Italy had never experienced such a disgrace since the start of the World Cup." Notably, Italy failed to qualify for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups. Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur defended the double disqualification—stemming from separate technical breaches—as a consequence of pushing regulatory boundaries too aggressively.
Ecclestone, however, was less forgiving: "There was clearly a lack of a process to check the cars properly after qualifying. The rule about car weight has been there for decades. "Just drive through the dirt after crossing the finish line and pick up as many stones as possible with your tyres in the gravel trap," he added.
Video evidence, however, captured drivers like the underweight Charles Leclerc and Red Bull 's Max Verstappen veering onto the grass post-race, seemingly to gather debris. Vasseur attributed Leclerc's issue to multiple factors: tyre wear from a one-stop strategy, lost front wing components, and "There was also a loss of a litre of water from his hydration system." Curiously, Leclerc encountered a similar drinks system failure in Australia, sparking a hilarious radio chat with his engineer Bryan Bozzi.
"Is there a leakage?" Leclerc asked. "I have the seat full of water," he added. "Must be the water," Bozzi responded, prompting Leclerc to jest bemusingly: "Add that to the words of wisdom.
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