Charles Leclerc was disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix after the FIA technical delegate found that his car was underweight.
The Ferrari driver crossed the line in P5 on the track but after his car weighed following the end of the race, it was found to be under the minimum 800kg required.
The FIA technical delegate, Jo Bauer, reported that the car was drained of all its fuel and a spare front wing of the same specification as the one used in the race was attached after Leclerc incurred damage on his one used during the Grand Prix.
After the weight came out on the scales as 799kg, which is 1kg under the minimum, Leclerc was referred to the stewards and subsequently disqualified as it is a breach of the technical regulations and Ferrari could offer no mitigating circumstances as to why it was under.
Ferrari fans were disappointed when the news broke, after the team confirmed it was a genuine error, having also had Lewis Hamilton disqualified for a separate technical infraction. This meant Ferrari lost 18 points and slipped further behind Mercedes and Red Bull in the Constructors’ battle.
Fans on social media have unearthed footage at the end of the Chinese GP, which appears to show Max Verstappen doing one thing that Leclerc could have done to prevent the disqualification.
Max Verstappen seen running off track on purpose to add weight to his Red Bull
It is a well-known practice that after a race drivers will run ‘offline’ on the race track in a bid to pick up discarded tyre rubber or debris in a bid to add weight to the overall car.
This is because F1 teams operate on fine margins, as was seen when George Russell was disqualified from the Belgian GP last year when he converted from a two-stop to a one-stop strategy and nearly won.
Fans on X (formerly Twitter) believe they saw Verstappen using the grass runoff as the drivers enter the Shanghai International Circuit pit lane to add some extra weight to his car.
The hot tyres would likely pick up grass and debris, adding extra grams to the overall weight. Lando Norris did something similar on the back straight, as did Leclerc, however, the tyres would have likely brushed off a lot of what they picked up by the time they made it to the pits.
Depending on how close Leclerc was to the weight margins, doing something similar to Verstappen could have helped his cause.
- READ MORE: Every time Lewis Hamilton has been disqualified from a Formula 1 race after 2025 Chinese Grand Prix exclusion
Ferrari were concerned about disqualifications after Melbourne
While Leclerc’s disqualification can be simply put down to an error in calculations, Hamilton’s poses a much more fundamental problem for Ferrari.
As part of the setup changes they made to his car between the Sprint and Grand Prix, the team raised the ride height of Hamilton’s car after they were concerned about skid wear.
The same also happened in Melbourne, which is believed to be a consequence of Ferrari’s suspension change between their 2024 and 2025 car.
With the SF-25 they must run it very low to exploit the aero package, which is impacting their ability to stay within the regulations on skid wear.
