The quadruple reigning champion Max Verstappen Heads “ Home ” this weekend with renewed confidence in his car and his team, but aware of the upcoming traps during the 71st Monaco Grand Prix of this weekend. Stimulated by the update package that brought him his 65th victory for Red Bull last Sunday, Verstappen confirmed that he was a candidate for a fifth title this year despite the domination of McLaren at the start of the season. He won easily to the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari to move less than 22 points from the leader of the Oscar Piastri championship and just nine years from Lando Norris in the other McLaren. He now hopes more of the same thing during the most legendary and glamorous event of F1.
But the double winner of the street race of the main of the Mediterranean principality, often processor, knows that the rules and the unique challenge of Monte Carlo, where he has a penthouse apartment, a tone of most other drivers, offers something unique to any other circuit.
The introduction of a compulsory strategy with two judgments for wet and dry conditions by the ruling body, the FIA and the limits of the ruthless, narrow and double barrier streets can encourage the record winners of 15 times McLaren to bounce for a sixth victory in eight races.
The champion team, with a quick and agile car that seemed dominant on the circuits with slow corners, has not won in Monaco since 2008, when the seven times Lewis Hamilton champion, now in Ferrari, was on the way to its first title.
‘Slow corners’
Red Bull’s influence of the influential team, Helmut Marko, recognized his threat to his team’s hope to win a fourth Monaco victory in five years.
“Things could be very different (in Monaco),” he said.
“The car does what Max wants again, because of the updates, which worked, but it was in Imola. Monaco is completely different with only the slow corners and it could be much worse.”
Verstappen also admitted: “Last year it was very difficult for us. I don’t expect it to be much easier this time.”
The 27 -year -old Dutchman finished sixth last year when Charles Leclerc became the first driver of Mongasque to win his home race in the modern era, a feat that could not be repeated because of Ferrari’s qualification difficulties this year.
For the same reason, Hamilton should not win a fourth victory in the Sunday race, the second in a triple-ttt of three Grands Prix on a consecutive weekend.
All this suggests that Piastri, the most coherent driver of the season to date, has the opportunity to guarantee a first triumph of Monaco with a fifth victory of the year, if he can resist the team of teammate Norris in what could be a tight qualification duel.
Norris has also never won in Monaco and only claimed one podium, suggesting that he must find a jump in the qualification pace to improve his perspectives.
“This is a circuit that I like,” said Piastri, in his measured Melburnian tone.
“Last year, it was a very good weekend for me, so I hope to get better. Obviously, it is a race for two stops so let’s see. I am convinced that we will be fast.”
George Russell of Mercedes is also likely to be a competitor thanks to his high qualification form with the teen teammate Kimi Antonelli one of the six recruits confronted with the test for the first time in an F1 car.
(With the exception of the title, this story has not been published by NDTV staff and is published from a unionized flow.)
Subjects mentioned in this article
