In the week leading up to the 2024 F1 Imola GP race weekend, Scuderia Ferrari announced an organisational change in the operations of Charles Leclerc’s garage. Xavi Marcos, Leclerc’s race engineer, will no longer continue in the role.
He has been replaced by Bryan Bozzi, who prior to this, was Leclerc’s performance engineer ever since the Monégasque joined the Maranello-based team in 2019.
The Ferrari driver was asked about this decision during the 2024 F1 Imola media day.
“The decision was made between the team and Xavi,” said Leclerc. “They had other plans in mind, I guess. It was communicated to me right after Miami.”
In the announcement shared by Scuderia Ferrari, it stated: “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.”
Leclerc continued on to talk about the newly-promoted Bryan Bozzi, who will be replacing Xavi Marcos in his role from this weekend onwards.
“Having said that, Bryan, who will take the role of Xavi from now onwards, is a person I have been working with since I arrived in Ferrari.
“He’s always been my performance engineer, so he knows exactly how everything works.
“It’s not like I’m starting from zero and that it’s going to be a complete adaptation. He’s been super smooth until now, and I’m sure that it will continue that way.
“That we’ll be at our 100% already from this weekend. That’s all I can say.”
When asked whether this change would improve the communication between the pit wall and Leclerc, he replied that they had always tried to communicate as much as they could and there was no issues on that side in the past.
“I think communication has always been a big thing since we worked with Xavi.
“We always try to communicate as much as possible. This is the way I work, to try and have the best picture overall.
“As I said, I think we’ll focus on having the smoothest transition possible and then we’ll focus on the things that matter to us.”
“But I don’t think it was a particular problem in the past.”
