Marcos has been Leclerc’s race engineer since he joined from Sauber at first of 2019, getting the position after his working as a factory-based engineer when Carlo Santi had been race engineer for Leclerc’s predecessor Kimi Raikkonen in 2018.
This adopted long-time Ferrari driver coach and esteemed race engineer Jock Clear working to implement Leclerc’s engineering crew for his first season with the Scuderia.
On Thursday, Ferrari introduced that Marcos will step down as Leclerc’s engineer from the beginning of subsequent week and the build-up to the Emilia Romagna GP, as he’s being moved to work on “different necessary firm programmes”.
The total Ferrari assertion reads: “Organisational replace: Ferrari pronounces that, as of Monday 13 Might, Xavi Marcos will deliver his precious expertise gained as a race engineer with the Components 1 crew to the event of different necessary firm programmes.”
Ferrari additionally introduced that Leclerc’s present efficiency engineer – Bryan Bozzi, a 10-year veteran with the Scuderia – will exchange Marcos as race engineer from the Imola spherical.
The transfer follows a collection of fractious crew messages between Leclerc and Marcos in recent times – a lot of which adopted discussions round Ferrari’s race technique selections following a collection of shambolic techniques selections throughout its title-contending interval in 2022.
On the 2023 United States GP, Leclerc revealed that he had “punched my steering wheel and my helmet” in frustration at listening to a Marcos name relating to trace limits following the lap he had produced to assert pole place at Austin.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, with Xavier Marcos, Race Engineer, Ferrari
Picture by: FIA Pool
In actual fact, Marcos had been referring to Max Verstappen’s time being deleted for a observe limits violation.
Then, only one race in the past on the 2024 Chinese language GP, a weird radio misunderstanding between the pair befell in that GP’s closing levels, when Marcos prompt Leclerc return to operating his “authentic line” at a sure a part of the Shanghai observe “for comparability”.
This left Leclerc seemingly bewildered. The alternate went as follows:
Marcos: Strive authentic line Turns 7 and eight for comparability.
Leclerc: What?
Marcos: Strive authentic line Turns 7 and eight.
Leclerc: I do not perceive. ‘Horizontal line? What the hell is that?
Marcos: Unique line! Like the start of the race.
Leclerc: ‘Unique line’, you mentioned?
Marcos: ‘Unique line’, sure.
Leclerc: What the hell does that imply?
Marcos: Simply overlook it, it is final lap.
It’s not but recognized what Ferrari’s race engineer plans are for when Lewis Hamilton joins the crew from Mercedes for 2025 in Carlos Sainz’s place at this marketing campaign’s conclusion.
Riccardo Adami continued in the identical place when Sainz joined the crew to exchange Sebastian Vettel for 2021, however there was hypothesis Hamilton might deliver his long-term Mercedes race engineer Peter Bonnington with him to Ferrari if the 2 groups might work out a deal.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff mentioned again in February when Hamilton’s Ferrari transfer was introduced that “this can be a dialogue which everybody must have within the months to return”.