Ferrari reveal when they’ll know fate of Leclerc’s gearbox as possible penalty looms

All eyes are on Ferrari as they await word on the status of Charles Leclerc's car following his crash in qualifying, with team boss Mattia Binotto stating the Scuderia will not gamble when it comes to reliability.

Ferrari managed to turn their strong performance on Thursday into their first pole of the season after edging Max Verstappen, but it may have come at a cost. Leclerc crashed late in Q3, bringing out a red flag that prevented the rest of the challengers from taking top spot. As a result both Leclerc and Ferrari are waiting to see the state of the car and gearbox, as a five-place grid penalty could be in the cards.

"No idea so let's wait and see," Binotto told RacingNews365.com and other members of the media when asked whether the car requires repairs. "The mechanics and engineers are now checking Charles' gearbox and his chassis. I think that in a couple of hours we'll have clarity on that, but for the moment I don't think that there is any feedback."

When asked whether there will be an update before the end of Saturday, Binotto said he believes that will be the case.

"Certainly yes," Binotto added. "We will not gamble. For us what's important after such a qualifying is to try to maximise the number of points for the championship, and to maximise you need to finish the race so reliability remains the priority. If we have any doubts we will certainly change and fix."

Binotto said the team was disappointed with how things played out given the crash and the fact that Carlos Sainz could only qualify fourth despite his strong pace in all three practice sessions.

"It's always a shame crashing a car that's first," Binotto said. "I think the entire thing was disappointing not for the crash, and certainly not for the pole because we believe that Carlos could have done better overall and we said that could have been the case.

"As team we could have done even better today and so we feel a bit disappointed for that."