A faulty fixing on the wastegate of Felipe Massa's car's turbocharger was to blame for its lack of power during the Canadian Grand Prix.
Massa qualified 17th but will start from 15th once penalties have been applied to Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel. Before being knocked out in Q1, Massa complained that he had limited power and after an investigation the team found the issue within the wastegate on the turbo.
"It was a fixing within the wastegate mechanism of the turbocharger that failed, so it will be changed for tomorrow," head of vehicle performance Rob Smedley said. "That was the physical reason and it just effectively meant, in very simple terms, he just didn't have any power. It was very difficult to charge the battery as well from the hybrid system from the MGU-H. So effectively we were just missing lots of power and couldn't do anything about it.
"We're replacing like for like and we're replacing it for reliability reasons. So clearly we can do that under parc ferme, as long as we get permission from the FIA that's allowed under parc ferme and that will give us no further ramifications."
Massa said there was nothing he could do with a car so far down on power.
"Tricky day, these happen, we definitely got a problem we can't do anything, we just change what has to be changed and tomorrow is another day," he said. "So unfortunately it was going to be a good qualifying for us, we could have both cars in the top five and was just have one and the other one is my car so we had the problems.
"We had an issue on the - I don't even know the names we have so many difficult names - this piece was not recharging the battery so after the out lap I was losing power because it was not recharging the battery and I had no power in the engine. It was the first time I had this problem
"We definitely expect to be competitive tomorrow, the car was not competitive in Monaco, so in the end now the car is behaving how it's supposed to be and that's important we know it's supposed to be like that anyways."
