Ferrari Comes Through With A Shocker in Italy

Charles Leclerc made his way back to the podium for the Italian Grand Prix after starting from fourth on the grid. The win marked Leclerc’s 2nd win of the season. Despite the Red Bulls and McLaren emerging at the front as the championship race leaders Ferrari has kept their foot in the discussion with finishes like these.

An ecstatic Leclerc stated, What an incredible feeling. The first time I won in Monza in 2019 was so emotional to both me and to our whole team, I didn’t think that winning here could ever feel like that again, but today, it did. Seeing our tifosi celebrating with us is just amazing and I am so glad that we could share this victory for a second time. Monaco and Monza were the two races I have always wanted to win, because they are so special to me.

A huge thank you to every single person in our team who made this happen today. You have done an incredible job to make this dream a reality and we can all be proud to have achieved this together. We had a perfectly executed strategy today and beat our competitors to it, and we will give everything to keep this momentum for the rest of the season, taking any opportunity we have.”

Words from Team Principal Fred Vasseur

What a mega result for the team! This is a real confidence booster for all of us and our tifosi who really made the difference this weekend. It was a very good race in which Charles drove incredibly well and I think we fully deserved this win. After qualifying, we were a bit disappointed, because we knew we had the potential to do very well. From the beginning of the season, I think we are probably in better shape on race pace than in qualifying and it was the case also today. Once again the execution was very good and we were able to turn things around. Last year tire management was our biggest weakness whereas now, I think it’s one of the advantages we have with this car.

It was already the case last week in Zandvoort and now we are quite consistent in terms of race pace to the point that we did think it might be a two stop but then we saw very low degradation in the second stint and we changed our strategy accordingly and Charles had the race under control all the time. It was a risk but sometimes you have to take risks and today it worked. We worked well as a team and we knew that Carlos could help if we did a one-stop with the two cars. He was also helping us with feedback on the tires because it’s important to have two opinions, two different sources of information and we were quite relaxed on this front.

The Red Bulls Are Falling Apart

Despite a healthy points lead in the constructors championship race early this season Red Bull find themselves scratching their heads after seeing McLaren once again take a large chunk of points out of their lead. Team Principal Christian Horner said, :“I think this circuit has exposed deficiencies that we have in the car versus last year, and I think that we have a very clear issue which has been highlighted this weekend and we know we have to get on top of and address [that], otherwise we put ourselves under massive pressure. “I think on other [tracks], running more downforce perhaps hides some of the balance issues that we have, and you can see that we’ve got a disconnection in balance that just isn’t working.

“And as soon as you end up in that situation, you end up [where] you’re harder on tires, you end up compensating the balance around – to cure one problem you create another, so you just end up in a vicious circle. I think it’s been there for some time. I think actually, really going through the data, there [were] issues there at the beginning of the year in the characteristics. I think others have obviously made a step, and as we’ve pushed the package harder it’s exposed the issue.

“So even if you go back in the data, there were a few races last year where [it was there]. I think it’s a characteristic we have to address, and there’s full focus at the factory in Milton Keynes.”

Italian Grand Prix Race Results