F1 News: Charles Leclerc to have new race engineer

Charles Leclerc will have a new race engineer starting from the upcoming Imola GP, ending his time with Xavier Marcos.

Ferrari has announced a series of organisational changes to be implemented in the coming days. Perhaps the most significant development concerns Charles Leclerc, who will no longer have Xavier Marcos as his race engineer. The Spaniard will take a new role within Ferrari, operating in other aspects of the company. In his place will be, Bryan Bozzi, a performance engineer with almost a decade of experience in the team.

In many ways, Xavi Marcos and the discourse surrounding him represent the growth of F1. Ten years ago, race engineers faced the pressure of Racing for their teams but were generally shielded from public scrutiny. While team radios were occasionally made public, it was never to the same extent as today.

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Leclerc always trusted in Marcos

In modern F1, however, every moment is hyper-scrutinised. In this environment, Marcos was often scrutinised for his team radio communications with Leclerc.

The Monegasque has always been quick to defend his race engineer in the face of criticism. Previously, for example, the Ferrari driver revealed how number of people Marcos would listen to simultaneously during a race. In short, Leclerc pointed towards organisational issues—rather than individual error—for any team radio mishaps.

Often, the Spanish engineer would bear much of the criticism for strategy decisions he did not make.

Regardless, the Maranello-based team released these statements earlier today:

“Scuderia Ferrari HP announces that, as of Monday 13 May, Xavi Marcos will bring his valuable experience gained as a race engineer with the Formula 1 team to the development of other important company programmes.

“Scuderia Ferrari HP announces that Bryan Bozzi, who has worked in the team for ten years, currently as Performance Engineer to Charles Leclerc, will now take on the role of his Race Engineer as from next weekend’s Gran Premio del Made in Italy and dell’Emilia-Romagna at Imola.”

It will be intriguing to see the motivation for this change. Before the season began, it was Charles Leclerc who expressed that he wanted to continue working with Marcos.

As a result, such an abrupt change is difficult to understand. However, it seems plausible that more clarity on this change will emerge next week in Imola.

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