The Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) will seek to win the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday to regain the reins of the Formula 1 World Championship, in a race that never ended in the highest category of motorsport.
Source: AFP
The ‘Scuderia’ driver, dominating the general classification since the start of the season, suffered a mechanical problem last weekend in Spain when he was comfortably dominating the race.
Forced to leave, he lost the overall lead in the World Championship, which passed into the hands of reigning champion Max Verstappen.
Far from falling apart, Leclerc recalled that “the season is still long, we know we have the potential”.
Something that the 24-year-old driver will once again try to prove on the occasion of the 7th race of the year.
But for this, he must first complete the 78 laps through some streets that he knows perfectly. “I hope that I can finally finish this Grand Prix at home”, he wished in Spain.
“At last”, because the Monegasque always had to leave since 2017 due to accidents or technical problems.
– Hamilton sanctioned? –
The season so far has seen some interesting matchups at the top: Verstappen leads Leclerc by six points, and in the constructors Red Bull has a slim 26-point margin over Ferrari thanks to its double podium finish in Spain.
Behind the leading teams, Mercedes, third and in difficulty at the start of the season with the arrival of the new technical regulations, increased its performance in Barcelona after having made several improvements to its single-seaters.
The Monaco GP, legendary F1 event, could see Mercedes deprived of the seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton on the occasion of his jewels.
Although the ban on wearing jewelry on board single-seaters was introduced in 2005 as a safety measure, it was never really applied until this season, at the hands of the new race director of the International Automobile Federation (FIA), Niels Wittich .
– New format –
And as a novelty this year in the Principality, the race will take place on three consecutive days like the rest of the calendar stages, and not on four days as was the case according to tradition.
Historically, the Monaco GP, present in the first year of the F1 World Championship in 1950, was organized on the Ascension weekend. Being Thursday a bank holiday, that day was chosen to roll the single-seaters, before a break on Friday and qualifying on Saturday and the race on Sunday.
This uniqueness had been maintained until now, even in years when the GP did not coincide with Ascension.
This weekend Monaco also hopes to rediscover its fervor of yesteryear after two years disrupted by the covid-19 pandemic, with the GP canceled in 2020 and without full grandstands a year later.
