Ferrari's Monza spirit must continue
At Ferrari's home race, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc both had a fighting spirit that we haven’t seen all season. It's exactly what they need moving forward.
Ferrari hasn’t had a great season.
It’s been a backward step from 2022 and they’ve only been on the podium four times.
Earlier in the season, there were whispers of an unhappy atmosphere and claims of a staff exodus. More recently, unproven rumours have swirled about Carlos Sainz leaving.
When we’ve heard about Ferrari this year, it’s generally been for something negative. Like back in Zandvoort, Ferrari was mostly remembered for a communication blunder with Charles Leclerc, leading to a slow pitstop.
But something about Ferrari’s general ethos changed in Monza - and yes, I realise it was almost certainly due to the incredible home support from the famous Tifosi.
But still, the point I’m trying to make is that, regardless of the cause, Ferrari showed a fighting spirit throughout the Italian Grand Prix weekend that hasn’t been seen all season.
It all started with Carlos Sainz on Saturday, when he edged out Max Verstappen for pole position by 13 thousandths of a second.
Then during Sunday’s race, Sainz fought like a lion as he tried against all odds to keep both Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez at bay.
In one of his best defensive moves, Sainz boldly gave Verstappen a taste of his own medicine by refusing to yield when the Dutchman tried an overtake at the outside of turn one. The move was, in the words of Verstappen, “a bit naughty”.
Later on, Sainz was probably a bit naughty again, as he squeezed and pushed Perez around the track in a desperate effort to keep him behind too.
Ultimately, it didn’t work out for Sainz with either Verstappen or Perez. But, to use the words of veteran F1 journalist Mark Hughes, he “fought valiantly against inevitable defeat”.
It would be fair to say that this year, we haven’t seen any driver fight Red Bull as hard as Sainz did.
On the other side of the garage, Charles Leclerc was also feisty when the opportunities arose. He gave Sergio Perez a tight squeeze at the second chicane and then pressured Sainz in the final laps, creating a tense battle for the final spot on the podium.
Despite Ferrari’s relatively strong position in the race, Leclerc seemed determined to pass his teammate and, arguably, his antics risked a race-ruining collision.
But, the drivers showed each other respect and what we saw was a great bit of hard racing. It was no doubt sorely needed in a season that’s mostly been underwhelming.
Both Sainz and Leclerc were ecstatic about their battle at the end of the race. Leclerc said: “This is Formula 1, this is what it should be all the time.”
Before this weekend in Monza, I was planning to write about how I thought things hadn’t changed all that much at Ferrari since new team boss Fred Vasseur took over at the start of 2023.
I was going to point out that the mistakes that became so common in 2022 were continuing to creep into this season’s efforts.
For Leclerc, there was the pitstop communication blunder in Zandvoort, a slow pitstop and pitlane speeding penalty in Hungary, and the miscommunication over tyres during the wet-dry qualifying in Canada.
After that Canada mishap, Leclerc remarked publicly to Sky Sports F1: “It's not the first time it's happened. We are quite often on the wrong side of making those decisions in those tricky situations.”
But, in Italy, it was as if there was an entirely new Ferrari team on the grid. Martin Brundle put it best during commentary, remarking that Ferrari came to Monza with a vengeance and threw everything they could at Red Bull.
It’s this sort of spirit we haven’t seen enough of in 2023, and my goodness was it entertaining to watch as fans. It’s so refreshing to see a team actually try and take on Red Bull - and that’s why Ferrari must aim to replicate it moving forward.
Additionally, the 3rd and 4th result in Monza was Ferrari’s highest-scoring weekend of 2023 - and it was also good enough for them to move ahead of Aston Martin in the Constructors’ Championship. They now sit 3rd.
I agree with what you say, but also, they were mms from both of them ending up in a crash and giving it all away, so it's tricky. And honestly Carlos was the better driver this weekend. I fundamentally believe that if Charles was running ahead of Carlos, Ferrari would have implored Carlos to hold station. But since it was Charles, they were like "race" because they're scared they will lose him. They should be worried about losing Carlos instead at this point.