(Motorsports news) Since joining Leclerc from Sauber at the beginning of 2019, Marcos has served as the team’s race engineer. Prior to taking on the position, he worked as an engineer in a factory when Carlo Santi served as Kimi Raikkonen’s race engineer in 2018.
This came after renowned race engineer and longtime Ferrari driver instructor Jock Clear worked to put Leclerc’s engineering team into practice during his rookie season with the Scuderia.
Ferrari said on Thursday that Marcos will leave his position as Leclerc’s engineer at the beginning of the following week, during the build-up to the Emilia Romagna GP, in order to focus on “other important company programs.”
The complete statement from Ferrari reads: “Organisational update: Ferrari 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.”
The action comes after a string of contentious team communications between Leclerc and Marcos in the past several years, many of which were prompted by conversations about Ferrari’s racing strategy selections after a string of disastrous tactics decisions made during its 2022 title-contending phase.
After completing the lap that earned him pole position in Austin, Leclerc said at the 2023 United States Grand Prix that he had “punched my steering wheel and my helmet” in annoyance when hearing a Marcos call about track limitations.
Actually, Max Verstappen’s time being erased for exceeding track regulations was what Marcos had been alluding to.
Then, at the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix, just one race had passed when, in the latter moments of the race, Marcos advised Leclerc go back to running his “original line” at a specific section of the Shanghai track “for comparison.” It was an odd radio misunderstanding between the two.
This left Leclerc seemingly bewildered. The exchange went as follows:
Marcos: Try original line Turns 7 and 8 for comparison.
Leclerc: What?
Marcos: Try original line Turns 7 and 8.
Leclerc: I don’t understand. ‘Horizontal line? What the hell is that?
Marcos: Original line! Like the beginning of the race.
Leclerc: ‘Original line’, you said?
Marcos: ‘Original line’, yes.
Leclerc: What the hell does that mean?
Marcos: Just forget it, it’s last lap.
Additionally, Ferrari revealed that Bryan Bozzi, a seasoned Scuderia veteran of ten years, who currently works as Leclerc’s performance engineer, will take Marcos’ place as race engineer starting with the Imola round.
When Lewis Hamilton joins the team from Mercedes in 2025 to take Carlos Sainz’s seat at the end of this campaign, it is unknown what Ferrari’s race engineer plans are.
When Sainz joined the team to take Sebastian Vettel’s seat for 2021, Riccardo Adami remained in the same role. However, there has been conjecture that, should the two teams be able to reach an agreement, Hamilton would bring Peter Bonnington, his longtime Mercedes race engineer, with him to Ferrari.
Toto Wolff, the CEO of Mercedes, stated that “this is a discussion which everyone needs to have in the months to come” when Hamilton’s Ferrari move was revealed in February.
