Charles Leclerc is not a superstitious man, but it would be easy to forgive the Ferrari driver for questioning whether he is truly cursed with bad luck given his awful racing record around his Monaco home.
He has never finished a race around Monte Carlo in his single-seater career. He even failed to start the Monaco Grand Prix from pole position last season. Monaco’s most successful homegrown F1 talent aims to break that run of misfortune in the best possible manner by becoming the first Monegasque driver to win his home grand prix on Sunday.
He has given himself the best possible start by securing the most important pole position of the season after looking the most comfortable driver of the top two teams through the first two days of the weekend. But after years of disappointment, does he not expect that he will inevitably be struck by bad luck once again?
“No, no… I’m not superstitious at all,” Leclerc said. “We’ve had a smooth weekend until now and we’re starting in the best place possible for tomorrow’s race. So hopefully, we have a clean race tomorrow and we finally have a good result at home.”
“I don’t think about the past, I just focus my own job for tomorrow.”
The story of the 2022 season so far has been the battle between Ferrari and Red Bull on Sundays. But as in Miami Leclerc will be joined by his team mate Carlos Sainz Jnr on the front row tomorrow after Sergio Perez crashed on his final Q3 effort, ruining the final attempts of all four drivers in the process.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner accepts that it’s going to be very difficult for Perez and championship leader Max Verstappen to break through the two Ferraris during tomorrow’s 78-lap race.
“Naturally Checo is frustrated as he has been on it all weekend and was hoping for more today, and it was also frustrating for Max as that’s the second consecutive year he’s missed out on a final flying lap,” said…