Charles Leclerc believes Ferrari can win the 2022 Italian grand Prix after taking the pole position for Sunday’s race.
Leclerc narrowly edged Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and he will start the race in Monza in front. He is expected to enjoy Verstappen’s grid penalty as the Dutchman is demoted from second to seventh spot in the starting line.
Ferrari made a great start to the 2022 season with Charles Leclerc’s two wins from three races that gave him a 46-point lead, but Verstappen has turned the tables around and currently leads second-place Leclerc by 109 points in the championship table.
In the constructors’ championship, Ferrari lead Mercedes by 30 points and Leclerc is confident of victory in Monza on Sunday after recent positive outings at the Belgian GP and Dutch GP where they finished third.
The Monaco driver said: “Today is critical, but today the feeling (of the car) is really good. We just need to put everything together and do no mistakes. Honestly, I am quite confident that we have got a very good race pace.
“Since FP1 it’s been a completely different weekend here, we’ve been working a lot since Spa to work out exactly what we did wrong.
“I’m sure that Max [Verstappen] will come back very quickly to fight with us for first position, but it will be a very bad surprise if he passes us like he did in Spa and pulls away.”
Verstappen, on the other hand, disclosed that the 16th race in the F1 calendar will be a close challenge on Ferrari’s home soil.
He said: “You could see already the whole weekend they (Ferrari) were very competitive and Spa could have been a bit of a fluke, especially for other teams.”
Mercedes driver George Russell who will start from the second spot, admitted that Red Bull and Ferrari are faster but they will manage for a podium finish.
“I would like to think we could fight with Charles and to fight with Max but I think there is no chance, they are far quicker than us,” Russell said.
“A podium has got to be a minimum for us so I hope we can have a clean start and be in the fight.
“We are not really too focused on him (Max) or what they do because he will finish ahead of us ultimately. He will probably be in the lead in 15 laps maybe.”
Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton finished third, fourth and fifth respectively in the free practice but they will serve grid penalties for the race. Hamilton will start the race from the back of the grid – 19th place while Sainz takes the 18th spot.
