F1: the stats that few know and gives hope to Charles Leclerc and Ferrari. The stats that few know and gives hope to Ferrari.

Ferrari has not started this championship in the best way, especially with Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque, who was Max Verstappen’s main rival in the championship fight last year, had to retire in the first race due to a technical problem.

In Italy, despite the fact that Bahrain was only the first of twenty-three races scheduled to take place this season, some newspapers are already talking about world championship ambitions postponed to 2024 for the Maranello team. However, there would seem to be a rare statistic in the history of Formula 1 that should encourage Charles Leclerc and determine the Monegasque driver to continue fighting until the last round against his Red Bull rivals.

The statistic that gives hope to Ferrari
As reported in today’s edition of the Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport, not everyone knows that in fact four of the Formula One world championships won by Scuderia Ferrari came after a retirement or even a non-participation in the opening race of the season.

Looking back over the history of this sport, in fact, we can see that in 1952 Alberto Ascari won the championship even though he didn’t participate in the first race. While 12 years later, in 1964, the champion was John Surtees, who retired during the inaugural GP rounds due to a gearbox problem. The same thing also happened to Niki Lauda, who in 1975 had problems with his engine. To end up at Jody Scheckter’s triumphant campaign in 1979, despite the fact that he had to retire due to an accident.

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History is full of such “coincidences”, and we must also remember that fewer races were held in the past. This means that it was much more complicated to replace a disadvantage as compared to nowadays. Charles Leclerc and the Maranello team therefore have every possibility of aiming for the 2023 Formula 1 world championship without being conditioned by the poor start in Bahrain. We’ll see if at the end of the year the trophy will be brought back to Maranello after 16 years, a non-random figure.