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(Reuters) – Ferrari junior driver Mick Schumacher, Michael’s son, won F2 at Monza on Saturday to ease some of the sadness of Formula One’s oldest and most glamorous team at their Italian Grand Prix.
A year after Charles Leclerc secured pole in front of the massive ranks of tifosi, the feverish fans who fill the former royal park in their tens of thousands, it was a very different story at the top.
Ferrari is going through one of its worst crashes and potentially its worst season in 40 years.
Leclerc qualified only 13th, making the most of a car with no speed in a straight line on the fastest track on the calendar, while four-time champion Sebastian Vettel was 17th.
It was the first time since 1984 that Ferrari failed to rank a car in the top 10 at Monza and a similar nightmare followed in Belgium last weekend that resulted in a pointless race.
“We were waiting a bit for the weekend. We knew that Spa and here are probably the two worst tracks for us … but for now it’s like this,” said Leclerc, last year’s winner.
“It’s difficult, because once you do a good lap and finish P13, it doesn’t feel good.
“It hurts even more because this is our home race, but it is the reality at the moment for us, unfortunately.”
Sports director Laurent Mekies agreed, but welcomed Schumacher’s success at a track where his father once delighted fans, who were sadly absent on Saturday due to COVID-19 restrictions with the closed-door race.
“On a tough day like this, there was a ray of sunshine … with Mick Schumacher getting his first win of the season,” he said.
“It’s great to see that, at this point, the top three in the series, frontman Robert Shwartzman, Callum Ilott and Mick himself, are all products of our Academy.”
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, Editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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