That of Charles Leclerc in the Monaco GP was not a simple stroll as it may have seemed from the outside, considering the superiority that the Monegasque demonstrated on the streets of his home with the Ferrari SF-24. The “Prince” experienced a couple of moments of apprehension that could have taken away the conviction of those who were finally building the perfect weekend.
At the end of the last free practice session, the Saturday one preceding qualifying, the alarm went off for engine 1 which the Cavallino technicians had decided to bring back into the race: 066/12 after the checks carried out on the 6 cylinder turbo, all doubts had been dispelled and the unit could return to rotations on a track like that of Monte Carlo where maximum power is not a determining aspect of performance.
A sensor went off and engineers at the Remote Garage discovered there was an abnormal temperature in the lubrication system. To avoid taking risks, it was decided to hastily dismantle the power unit to install unit 3 on the SF-24 #16, i.e. the one that was used by Charles in Imola a week earlier.
For the Cavallino team it was a super job that wasn’t planned, but in Q1 Leclerc only needed one lap to understand that everything had been reassembled to perfection and, after having dominated free practice, he was ready to chase pole position.
And instead, the wall didn’t have time to breathe a sigh of relief when another alarm went off. This time the aerodynamicists were the ones who were worried as they suddenly saw more than 20 points of aerodynamic efficiency disappear on the right side of the front wing.
Leclerc had not reported having touched curbs, guard rails or walls, so a bit of apprehension was growing because in Q1 there was the risk of not passing the first trap because there was a terribly short grid. Charles gets a 1’12”839 on lap 3 which is not in line with previous performances. He does a cool down lap and then relaunches: 1’12”452. A hair better, but not enough to hope to stay safe.
The TV images solved the mystery: a piece of plasticized advertising sheet covering a rail detached from the protection and went to cover a crucial area of the front wing. It was as if a… hood had been placed on the SF-24 which prevented the air flow from having an out wash effect near the side bulkhead, so the air was not pushed outside the front wheel, cleaning up the trail, but generating disastrous aerodynamic blocking.
Charles was promptly called back to the pits and, after the mechanics took away his banner, he started lapping again with the determination and confidence that we had appreciated in free practice: on the eighth lap he easily set a 1’11″653 which had protected him from any risk. And from that moment on, no one was able to contain him until he achieved the 24th pole position of his career, as two world champions had done before him, Niki Lauda and Nelson Piquet.
Ferrari and Leclerc gave a great demonstration of knowing how to keep calm in the only moments in which the perfect weekend in Monaco could turn into another unlucky episode like the previous ones experienced by the Monegasque in the Principality. Discovering how eight tenths of a lap of performance disappeared in an amen must have been a highly thrilling moment also for Bryan Bozzi, a fresh track engineer who knew how to keep his driver calm. Once the cap was removed, the 20 missing points magically reappeared. Then in Maranello he was able to start dreaming. And there are those who still haven’t woken up…
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