Lewis aims for 90 as Ferrari brace for more pain
EnginPeRmode change won’t make much difference to us, says F1 leader
Ferrari fans are having a wretched time this season, so it may be just as well that Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix will be run without spectators.
Even if a clampdown on engine modes slows Mercedes’s Formula One leader Lewis Hamilton, chasing his 90th career win, the locals can expect little cheer as they watch from afar due to Covid19 restrictions.
Ferrari, fifth overall and just two points clear of Renault, are heading for their worst season in 40 years and could chart new lows in their traditional home race — the first of three in Italy this year.
The sport’s oldest and most successful team, winners with Charles Leclerc from pole last year, drew a blank in Belgium last Sunday after failing to qualify in the top 10.
A repeat, at a similar “power” circuit, would be a humiliation for a team who have lost engine performance since a confidential and controversial settlement with the governing FIA earlier this year.
The last time Ferrari failed to score at Monza was in 2005, when only the top eight took points but Michael Schumacher still finished 10th.
In 1995 Ferrari suffered a double retirement, but Austrian Gerhard Berger at least started third.
“You have to be realistic, you cannot expect miracles.
“The package is what it is,” four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel said after Spa.
“We are not as strong as we would like to be so we need to stay optimistic and see the good things, even if at the moment there are not many.”
Hamilton, 47 points clear of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and heading for a seventh world title, is a five-time winner at Monza.
Another victory, his sixth in eight races, would line the Briton up to equal Schumacher’s record 91 wins at Mugello, a Ferrari-owned track hosting a grand prix for the first time to celebrate the Italian team’s 1,000th race.
“I know the implications of the rule that’s come in to try to take away ... try to slow us down, but I don’t think it’s really going to make a big difference,” Hamilton said of the engine mode change.
“Whatever is thrown at us we go to the drawing board, we hash it out, we communicate, we delegate and then we execute it. That’s what we do.
“Keep throwing the punches and we will do our best to return back just as hard.”
The event would be held behind closed doors, but 250 doctors and nurses would watch from the grandstands as guests, Ferrari said ahead of their home race.
The race at Monza, outside Milan, is the eighth round of a Formula One season that has so far been staged without live spectators, with teams operating in isolated “bubbles” and limited media in attendance.
Ferrari said the medics, who will keep socially distanced, were being invited as “a symbolic honour for their courage, sense of duty and altruism as front-line workers in the fight against Covid-19”.
Italy is one of the European countries worst hit by the pandemic, with more than 35,000 deaths in an outbreak that peaked between March and April.
The race after Monza is the Tuscan Grand Prix at Ferrariowned Mugello, north of Florence, and that will be the first to admit paying spectators.
Some 2,880 a day are set to watch from three grandstands over the three days.
Most of the races after that are also expected to admit limited numbers of spectators. —