HOMETOWN HERO
Leclerc pole thrills Monaco as Lewis trails again
CHARLES LECLERC, afflicted here over the years by so much ill-luck and misjudgment, was the home-town hero of Monaco as he put his Ferrari on pole.
A year ago he also took pole but, after finding dizzying speed, pranged his scarlet machine. He made it as far as the parade lap the next day, but the damage sustained to his gearbox in the crash condemned him to miss the race.
More embarrassingly, a fortnight ago he ended up in the barriers during a demonstration drive in Niki Lauda’s 1974 Ferrari at the Monaco Historique. Brake failure was later blamed, but by then he had entered an apology that served as a mea culpa.
In a total of five attempts on his local asphalt, he has never made it as far as the chequered flag.
Well, yesterday, the 24-year-old was posing for selfies, as chance would have it, under the honours board memorialising the winners of the previous 78 editions of the world’s most famous motor race. He went to bed close to the startfinish straight last night dreaming of adding his name to that list.
If he does so and becomes the event’s first native victor since Louis Chiron in 1931, he will likely reclaim the championship lead from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who holds a six-point advantage but could only qualify fourth fastest.
Leclerc’s cause is helped by his team-mate Carlos Sainz starting alongside him on the grid, with Sergio Perez third best in the other Red Bull.
While Leclerc was clean and serene, Perez added a late twist of drama by losing control at Portier and sliding into the barriers. Sainz, unsighted, collected the Mexican’s car. Nobody was hurt. The red flag was waved. Leclerc’s pole was secured.
‘It’s very special,’ said Leclerc. ‘It has been a very smooth weekend.
The pace was in the car and I just had to do the job.’
The greatest danger to Leclerc, other than his tendency to make unforced errors, may lie in the skies. There is a 60 per cent chance of rain this afternoon and that could pep things up on a track that yields few overtaking opportunities.
There is talk of Monaco being expunged from the calendar with the principality’s contract expiring today. If that turns out to be so, which is improbable, it would be a failure of negotiation, an insult to history. And even now to see the cars thread themselves through this twisting ribbon of road is a rare and undiminished thrill.
In other news, Lewis Hamilton was only the third-best British driver of the day. McLaren’s Lando Norris, hoarse with tonsillitis, qualified fifth, a fine showing in what is developing into another season of significant progress on the back of the last.
A measure of Norris’s achievement was the failure once again of his under-pressure team-mate Daniel Ricciardo to make it into Q3.
The Australian is out of form and down on confidence. He crashed on Friday and laboured to 14th yesterday.
The 32-year-old will struggle to see out his contract that is due to run until the end of 2023. But he may survive the prospect of a mid-season sacking if only on the basis that there are no obvious replacements. As for Hamilton, he has now been out-qualified 4-3 by 24-year-old George Russell. Yesterday the margin of the younger man’s superiority was more than three-tenths of a second. They will start sixth and eighth.
‘I’m not doing any dancing but I do it want it to rain, to make it a little bit better than driving around in the dry in eighth,’ said Hamilton, 37. ‘I was seventh here last year and I just drove around in seventh.
‘If the weather plays up, maybe we can do a different strategy. I have had bad luck all year, so it is bound to stop at some stage.
‘We were not very good in the low speed corners at the last race in Barcelona so I anticipated it would be difficult here, but it is worse than expected. It is super bouncy.’
So much for Mercedes saying in Spain that they possessed the fastest car. That boast belongs to Leclerc right now.