Hello friends, good vibes to all.
“The predestined” or ‘The Prince of Monza’, this is how Charles Leclerc is called within the tifosi team after winning, for the second time in career in the top category, in the Italian Grand Prix and its mythical circuit of Monza. For Ferrari fans, winning here is as if they had won the championship, automatically the crowd turned to the track to fill it with color and celebrate a new victory, the 21st in its history, at the feet of the Monegasque who, it must be said, made an extraordinary race of self-regulation and tire management. And it was so much so that NOBODY expected that this could happen.
But as there are the light ones, we also have the dark ones and this is where the contradictions come and how changeable this sport can be. Last week in this same space I said that McLaren was scary, very scary, this is something I still maintain but there are other details that these people have to solve if they want to fight the championship against Verstappen and especially the constructors. I say this having seen what happened yesterday: wrong decisions of the team, of the drivers themselves and mistakes on track that can cost a race. They have something called: “Papaya rules” which I guess are the terms in which they can compete with each other on track; yesterday these rules, for me, were poorly implemented.
Why? - Because McLaren has very real options to fight for both championships as they currently have a better car than Red Bull but by far, we are in a moment of the season in which Verstappen is very uncomfortable with his car, there is always a complaint, it seems that there is no rhythm, it does not respond as it should and this friends, I think it is temporary. It is for all this that McLaren should capitalize on this downturn and get closer but they are not doing it. Yesterday Piastri should not have overtaken Norris, what this did was to disrupt the race and the young Briton went from starting first to fall to third place. That Lando has to improve aspects at the start? - Undoubtedly and in fact there is a deadly statistic that confirms this.
Lando Norris throughout his career has started 7 times from the lead and all seven times he has lost the position and watch out for this ON THE FIRST ROUND of which 5 have been this season and of those five have been against Oscar Piastri. This undoubtedly represents a problem because something happens that he is not able to maintain control of the starts. And if we add to this the fact that the team is encouraging a battle between them, we are in bad shape. McLaren should focus on making Lando win, Piastri's time will come, they have to take advantage of this window of weakness of Horner's team to climb as much as they can. So yesterday was nothing more than mismanagement within the team itself and that well, no one was counting on the speed of Leclerc's Ferrari.
But talking a little bit about the race, it was a very good one indeed. Many penalties, many bad pit stops and the way in which the use of tires was managed was key. In the end everyone made 3 stops or the vast majority, the only one who made 2 was Leclerc and there was the victory. A magnificent handling of that hard rubber to be able to finish as leader and also the Ferrari's race pace compared to last season is much better, especially in straights, the car is really fast. Piastri with a couple of laps more would have chased the Monaco driver because he obviously came with a new set of tires but he didn't make it. Lando was relegated to third place because everything that happened at the beginning.
If you ask me it was an unfortunate day for McLaren, they started from 1-2 and could not finish as well, which I think should have been the main goal. Sainz was fourth after a great race, Hamilton 5th and Verstappen 6th. In other news Colapinto, the young Argentinean made his debut and did it perfectly, in one race he did better than Sargeant in the whole season. Magnussen was penalized again and was banned from the next race due to accumulation of negative points on his license. The next race will be in Baku in two weeks. Norris was 62 points behind Max and McLaren was only 8 points behind Red Bull. Everything would have been different if they had focused on what was said before, but nothing, keep rowing.
¡Un abrazo a todos, nos leemos en la próxima!
Well my people that's all for today, I hope you liked it.
¡Hugs to all, see you next time!