Last year, Charles Leclerc applauded thousands of passionate Ferrari enthusiasts at Monza after ending the team’s nine-year wait for victory at home.
Fast forward 12 months and things will be very different at the Formula One Grand Prix in Italy and only because of the lack of enthusiasts due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Ferrari’s bad year gets worse with every race: Leclerc finished 14th at the Belgian Grand Prix last weekend, only teammate Sebastian Vettel, both championship winners for more than a minute and leaders Lewis Hamilton.
“No miracle is expected this weekend, I hope we can be a little bigger than spa,” Leclerc said at a press conference on Thursday.
Vettel is a four-time champion and has not yet finished among the five most sensible this season, and has been tenth or less in four races.
“I’m not going to lie, it’s not going to be a simple weekend for us,” Vettel said.”I think it’s very difficult to expect a big replacement from last weekend.Having said that, last weekend we were a little worse off than normal, so we can get back to normal.
“But we also know that this kind of track hurts us through nature, so let’s see.We’re here to fight and we’re also here to fight for typhoids and we’re doing our best.”
The team’s director, Mattia Binotto, turns out he doesn’t know how to replace things in the once dominant Ferrari and recently said it may be years before he returned to a winning cycle.
Vettel will be there for that, as he leaves at the end of the season, but Leclerc has a contract until the end of 2024.
The promising 22-year-old asked if he had the patience to wait for Ferrari to return to the top.
“On the one hand, I don’t really have a choice,” he says with a smile.”But yes, it will actually take a little patience and I’m willing to wait, but it’s also my job to check to make this procedure as short as possible and get back to where we deserve to be.
“It may not be easy, it will take time, but I am in a position to do it.”
Leclerc and Vettel are Hamilton’s 100 rankings after the British driving force achieved their fifth victory in seven races in their inevitable march to the record equivalent to Michael Schumacher’s name.
Hamilton and his Mercedes conqueror look an elegance of their own this season, and their hard-hitting victory on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit marked the 89th of his career, which led him to two of Schumacher’s winning records.He’s on his way to winning a sixth championship, name in seven years and seventh overall.
Hamilton is now ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and 50 issues ahead of his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas.
Verstappen controlled to beat The Mercedes Duo at last month’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone, but admits that his performance at Monza is slim.
“It’s usually not our most productive track with all the long straights, however, last year, in practice, we were quite competitive in education before we penalized, so let’s hope it’s the same again.thing this year, ” he said.” Spa was my sixth consecutive podium, so we can continue on this streak and soon fight for the first instead of the moment and the third, but that might not be the case here.Of course, we keep pushing and we don’t give up, but we have to be realistic that Mercedes is still the favorite.”
___
More AP races: https://apnews.com/apf-AutoRacing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports