MONTECARLO. More than free practice. Charles Leclerc already felt like he was in the race, not even in qualifying: rarely have we seen such a determined driver on a Formula 1 Friday, we would say any Friday, except for him it isn’t, because we are racing at his home and above all because Charles on this beautiful track and damned man has a score to settle with destiny. “We would like to help him with this,” team principal Frederic Vasseur explained on the eve. For now, Ferrari seems to be on the right track: always in the lead, even in the first session if we consider the drivers on the same tire (he never mounted the soft tyres), at a certain point Leclerc seemed to want to humiliate his rivals, sending a clear signal to the competition: a second to Lewis Hamilton, then a half to Max Verstappen, shaving off tenths with every fastest lap. Until the traffic encountered in the last attempts, complete with an expletive forbidden to minors on the radio, which took away some of the rhythm. And so Lewis Hamilton, who surprisingly ended the first hour of testing in the lead, confirmed himself in the top positions with the revived Mercedes, less than two tenths from the top.
Test of strength
Evidence of how Leclerc has already explored the limits of Monte Carlo with the SF-24 lies in the gap he left to teammate Carlos Sainz, sixth at almost seven tenths. Red Bull was in difficulty like in Imola: Max Verstappen climbed from 11th to 4th position, still more than half a second behind Leclerc and certainly not satisfied with his RB20. At lunchtime he couldn’t turn, complaining of feeling “like on ice”, so he touched the wall at the Portier and explained via radio that his car “jumps like a kangaroo, I have a headache”. One can swear that it also came to his track engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, although he is used to receiving the outbursts of the three-time world champion, who – be careful – ended the session with an excellent simulation of race pace. Leclerc’s performance was also good, as he lapped a second faster than Hamilton. Given the precedents, however, it is not appropriate to consider Verstappen out of the candidates for pole and therefore victory. Among which, in addition to the slightly delayed McLarens (Lando Norris 5th, Oscar Piastri 12th), a certain Fernando Alonso also reappears: he has the third fastest time of the day.
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