It’s almost time to stop all the romanticizing, and fantasizing about the streets of Monte Carlo and get down to business. The Monaco Grand Prix is just a few days away now and the teams are getting ready to contribute their chapter to the storied track.
For Ferrari, it means more diligent work trying to make gains on the Silver Arrows. Stop me if this sounds familiar. While the hard work continues to update the F14-T chassis to be competitive in the upcoming stretch of the schedule Monaco is almost a one off in the grand scheme of things. The bumpy nature of the racing surface makes the setup extremely difficult. In an attempt to help the teams Pirelli will be providing the teams with the soft and the super-soft tyres. Hopefully with the right setup and the extra grip from the rubber there will be enough mechanical grip in the cars to combat the difficult track.
Getting Traction in Monaco
Ferrari has been struggling with graining and tyre wear all season long and Monaco will be an amazing test to see if new boss Marco Mattiacci is helping the team get on top of some of their biggest shortcomings so far. This will be Mattiacci’s third grand prix as the F1 head for Ferrari.
Ferrari’s lead driver at the moment is Fernando Alonso, who is sitting third in the Drivers’ Championship, and he knows traction will be at a premium this weekend. He said it would be nice to have good traction for the weekend but even without the best traction in years past he’s been able to finish well and he has high hopes again this year.
Alonso’s teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, is only 11th in the points and has been struggling with his return to Ferrari. After the Spanish Grand Prix Raikkonen stayed in Barcelona for some testing with the team. He’s hoping that what they learned through the test will help them this weekend. He knows there is no room for mistakes from the team, or the driver on the narrow streets of Monte Carlo.
While Raikkonen and Alonso have looked miles apart at times the gap in performance between the two cars seems to be closing. The results from both cars hasn’t quite been what they were hoping for before the season started but after finishing one right behind the other in Spain it’s a positive step seeing the two cars performing equally to each other. Now we just have to wait and see if they can outdrive the competition on the driver’s track and land themselves on the podium.
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Main Photo Credit: WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images
