Ferrari fans see their faves take top two spots
No team has been better represented in the crowds at the Miami International Autodrome than Scuderia Ferrari — and those supporters greeted Charles Leclerc with a roar Saturday after he won the pole at the inaugural Miami Grand Prix.
It was a 1-2 finish for Ferrari in Miami Gardens: Leclerc beat out teammate Carlos Sainz Jr. by 0.190 seconds to take the pole position in the race Sunday.
“The fans are crazy. It’s incredible to be here in the U.S. and to see how much the sport has grown over the past few years, and to see so many people in the grandstands — it definitely motivates us,” Leclerc told Sky Sports, “and there are definitely a lot of Ferrari fans.”
Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen finished third in qualifying, 0.005 seconds behind Sainz.
Leclerc and Verstappen have each won twice in the first four grands prix of the 2022 Formula One World Championship. Leclerc, with three podiums to Verstappen’s two, sits atop the season standings entering the fifth race of the year.
This has been a resurgent season for Ferrari after more than a decade of struggles for the most storied team in Formula
This is not the racing series that ran downtown in 1995, 2002 and 2003 at Homestead-Miami Speedway from 1996 through 2010 or will be running at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at the end of the month. Those are called IndyCars (some were called “ChampCars” during that time, but we’re jumping over that rabbit hole).
This is Formula One’s first appearance in Miami. The Formula E series of electric-powered race cars raced downtown in 2015.
It’s easy to understand any casual fan’s confusion. Both Formula One and
One. Ferrari is the alltime leader with 16 Formula One World Constructors’ Championships — seven ahead of Williams Grand Prix Engineering — and their 15 Formula One World Drivers’ Championships are the most, too.
Ferrari, however, hasn’t won a World Constructors’ Championship since 2008 and hasn’t won a World Drivers’ Championship since 2007 when Kimi Raikkonen won his lone title.
It could finally change
There are 20 drivers, 10 two-car teams, competing in Formula One. Teammates don’t always get along, most famously Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost while owning the track for McLaren in 1988 and 1989, and Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet at Williams in 1986 and 1987.
Since 2010, the award for the team with the most points, the Constructors Championship, has been an exclusive prize for Mercedes and Red Bull — yes, the team is named after the energy drink sponsor, just as there was a team named after the Benetton clothing this year. Leclerc, a 24year-old from Monaco, snapped a two-year winless streak when he opened the season with a win at the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix in March. He also had the fastest lap and won the pole for the first so-called “grand slam” of his career. He has stayed dominant since, finishing in the top six in all four races so far.
He and his team will now be a significant favorite at 3:30 p.m. Sunday.
With the top two spots in qualifying, Ferrari has
The dominant driver of this era has been Mercedes’ No. 1 man, Great Britain’s Lewis Hamilton. World champion in six of seven seasons from 2014 to 2020 and a controversial ruling late in the season finale from winning in 2021, Hamilton holds all-time F1 records for most wins, most pole positions (fastest qualifier) and shares the record for world titles with Michael Schumacher (seven).
Want to get your F1 geek pals going? Ask “Is Hamilton the greatest of all time? Or, is he a great driver benefiting from equipment superior in performance compared to his contemporaries and in reliability and safety compared to past eras?”
Compared to their usual preeminence, Mercedes and Hamilton, in particular, have struggled through 2022’s first four races. Dutch driver Max Verstappen, a second generation F1 driver, won the 2021 series title for Red Bull and two of the first four races this season.
Though Verstappen won the most-recent race, the Emilia Romagna Grand
Prix in Italy, he’s a distant second in the points this season to the winner of the other two races. That would be Monaco-born Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc. Leclerc came to Ferrari in 2019 and quickly showed that he’d be a championship contender if Ferrari could catch up to Red Bull and Mercedes. It has. the front row to itself and can dictate the early stages of the race because of it.
“The consideration is that we are teammates and that we want to score for the team,” Sainz said. “You always treat your teammate with more respect.”
MERCEDES STRUGGLES
Mercedes-Benz’s struggles through the first month and a half of the 2022 World Championship have been one of the biggest surprises in Formula
Also, keep an eye on Red Bull’s No. 2 driver, Sergio Perez from Mexico, and Ferrari’s No. 2 driver, Spain’s Carlos Sainz; Mercedes’ George Russell, actually ahead of fellow Briton Hamilton in the points; and McLaren’s Lando Norris, who has improved his finishing position each race this year and finished third in the last race.
Past world champions still driving in the series besides Hamilton and Verstappen: German Sebastian Vettel for Aston Martin and Spain’s Fernando Alonso for Alpine.
HOW MANY U.S. DRIVERS ARE RUNNING F1?
Zero. The last driver to race under the stars and stripes was current IndyCar driver Alexander Rossi in 2015, the year before his shocking win in the 100th Indianapolis 500.
Though 1978 F1 world champion Mario Andretti was born in Italy and didn’t touch U.S. soil until he was 15, he’s a U.S. citizen and raced internationally as an American. Andretti’s world title bore eerie similarities to Phil Hill’s 1961 championship with Ferrari. In each case, the only driver who could catch the U.S. driver in the standings was his teammate (Ronnie Peterson for Andretti, Wolfgang von Trips for Hill) and that teammate
One this season.
Its weekend in South Florida hasn’t done anything to lessen the confusion.
Mercedes was the most impressive team in the second practice session Friday, with England’s
George Russell running the fastest time in the final practice of the day.
Less than 24 hours later, Mercedes couldn’t keep up the pace in the third and final practice Saturday, and then Russell settled for 12th in qualifying. Still, Russell and Mercedes made progress with some good practice sessions.
Fellow Englishman
Lewis Hamilton fared a bit better and will start sixth. Still, it’s a far cry from the usual expected results for the winningest driver in F1 history.
“We had a glimpse of a performance that is in the car if we get it in the right spot,” Mercedes CEO
Toto Wolff said. “The learning is exponential, but exponentially tough at the moment.”
Last year, Hamilton finished as the runner-up in the World Championship and only missed out on a record-breaking eighth title because of a controversial finish in the final race. This year, he hasn’t finished better than third in a single race and is down at seventh in the standings.
But the struggles haven’t dimmed Hamilton’s star: The former First Lady of died in a crash at the Monza season finale.
Dan Gurney didn’t win a world title, but won four races, including a 1967 race in the Eagle chassis he designed. It’s the last F1 win for an American-made car.
WHY HAS U.S. INTEREST IN F1 BOOMED?
Inside coverage and reality television have trumped predictable racing.
A racing series that once held cameras and the media at arm’s length started showing the Cool Down Room, where the race’s top three finishers grab a drink, yak about the race, and sometimes fight about it. Like NASCAR and IndyCar, broadcasts regularly include radio communication between drivers and their pit crews, giving a peek at raw emotions.
But what really goosed things in this “Real Housewives” era was the 2019 premiere of Netflix’s “Formula One: Drive to Survive.” The behind-thescenes look at Formula
One drivers, mechanics and team managers reacting to the intense pressure to shave another half second off a lap, get a few more points toward the championship allowed U.S. viewers to bond with F1’s people, never mind the lack of U.S. drivers. the United States, Michelle Obama, and “Star Wars” director George Lucas both watched practice Saturday from Hamilton’s garage.
‘SLIPPERY’ TRACK
The most common adjective thrown around about the Miami Autodrome on Saturday was “slippery.” Leclerc, Sainz and Verstappen all used the world after they wrapped up qualifying.
What might it mean? Teams and drivers say there’s not great grip when they get off the racing line, which could make it tough for drivers to pass because of how hard it is to drive side by side.
David Wilson: 305-376-3406, @DBWilson2
MOVIES OR TV SHOWS THAT WILL PUT YOU IN THE F1 MOOD
Obviously, “Drive to Survive.”
But, also, if you’re looking for a taste of history, “Williams,” a 2017 documentary on the man (Frank Williams) and family behind the team that scraped through the 1970s, rose to power in the 1980s and ‘90s, then faded; “Senna,” a documentary on the breathtakingly fast Brazilian driver whose 1994 death sent his nation into three official days of mourning; and “Rush,” a movie on the rivalry between 1975, 1977 and 1984 world champion Nikki Lauda and 1976 world champion James Hunt.
The crown jewel of Formula One racing movies remains “Grand Prix,” the 1966 movie directed by John Frankenheimer with an all-star international cast making the most of a stiff script.
But the movie’s true star was dazzling photography that impressed even actual drivers, some of whom appear as themselves, and was so electric that it won over Enzo Ferrari.
Ferrari granted Frankenheimer unprecedented access to the Ferrari factory and equipment.
David J. Neal: 305-376-3559, @DavidJNeal