Mick Schumacher provides ray of sunshine for sad Ferrari
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[September 09, 2020]
By Alan Baldwin
(Reuters) - Ferrari junior driver Mick
Schumacher, son of Michael, was an F2 winner at Monza on Saturday to
lighten some of the gloom for Formula One's oldest and most
glamorous team at their home Italian Grand Prix.
A year on from Charles Leclerc securing pole in front of the massed
ranks of tifosi, the feverish fans who fill the former royal park in
their tens of thousands, it was a very different story at the top.
Ferrari are going through one of their worst slumps, and potentially
their worst season in 40 years.
Leclerc qualified only 13th, extracting the most he could from a car
lacking straight line speed at the fastest track on the calendar,
while four-times champion Sebastian Vettel was 17th.
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It was the first time since 1984 that Ferrari had failed to qualify
a car in the top 10 at Monza and followed a similar nightmare in
Belgium last weekend that resulted in a race without points.
"We expected it a little bit coming into the weekend. We knew that
Spa and here are probably the two worst tracks for us... but for now
it's like this," said Leclerc, last year's winner.
"It’s tough, because once you do a good lap and you end up P13 it
doesn’t feel good.
"It hurts even more as this is our home race but it’s the reality at
the moment for us, unfortunately."
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![](../images/090920pics/sports49.jpg)
Racing driver Mick Schumacher attends an event to celebrate 90 years
of Italian premium sports car maker Ferrari racing team at Milan's
Duomo square, in Milan, Italy September 4, 2019. REUTERS/Flavio lo
Scalzo
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Sporting director Laurent Mekies agreed but welcomed Schumacher's
success at a track where his father once delighted the fans, who
were sadly absent on Saturday due to COVID-19 restrictions with the
race run behind closed doors.
"On a difficult day like this, there was one ray of sunshine... with
Mick Schumacher taking his first win of the season," he said.
"It’s great to see that, at the moment, the top three in the series,
leader Robert Shwartzman, Callum Ilott and Mick himself, are all
products of our Academy."
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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