Sebastian Vettel is still 17 points behind Lewis Hamilton in the 2018 Formula 1 World Championship, and yet it is the Ferrari driver who is now being spoken of as the favourite to prevail in their personal duel to become the first to join Juan Manuel Fangio on five titles won.
This weekend the teams reconvene at Monza for the final European race of 2018, and if Ferrari showed a clear performance advantage at Spa, we should only expect more of the same in front of the tifosi. And in the circumstances, a Ferrari home win is vital. Vettel needs to capitalise and further close that gap before the next leg in Asia.
Ferrari’s record on home soil is patchy. Of the 68 Italian GPs since 1950, the reds have won 18 times. No prizes for guessing who is responsible for the most. Michael Schumacher won there five times (1996, ’98, 2000, ’03 and ’06) and all were memorable – Ferrari winning at home for the tifosi always is. Let’s take a look at some of the precedents from which Sebastian Vettel might draw inspiration:
1951: Alfa’s Waterloo
Ferrari’s first Italian Grand Prix win was in 1949, of course at Monza. It faced little opposition that year as Alfa Romeo had withdrawn from grand prix racing. In 1950 and the start of the Formula 1 world championship Alfa was back with a strong driving line-up and it won the first title. But in 1951 Ferrari’s flare was in the sky – it had taken its first world championship race win at Silverstone in José Froilán González’s hands and Alberto Ascari won the following race for it at the Nürburgring. Then came Monza, which has been described as Alfa Romeo’s Waterloo. It brought a more powerful 159M to counter Ferrari and Juan Manuel Fangio took pole in it, but Ascari fought Fangio and the fellow Alfa of Nino Farina early on. Then when Fangio’s car threw a tyre tread Ascari got a lead he never lost. He and González took the one-two with Alfa a distant third. Alfa disappeared from the scene at the year’s end.
1970: Light and shade
This one started as sombre, as Jochen Rindt – well on the way to that year’s title – was killed in an accident in qualifying. And for a time on race day it seemed the locals would have even less to cheer. While the three Ferraris had qualified well two of them – Jacky Ickx and Ignazio Giunti – were soon out. This left Clay Regazzoni as the team’s sole representative and he was in but his fifth grand prix as well as was viewed as a man who made mistakes under pressure. Monza races in these days, before the addition of chicanes, were sheer slipstreaming battle and Regazzoni got stuck into the fight among the haughty company at the front including Jackie Stewart among others. Then with a dozen laps left he was able to break clear and get the rest out of his slipstream. It meant the day was his and the tribunes erupted; the crowd invaded the track on the slowing down lap then carried Regazzoni to the podium.
1979: As good as it gets
For the tifosi it cannot get much better than this. A one-two at Monza, and with it a championship was cemented. Indeed it was a day on which everything went Ferrari’s way. Alan Jones who had dominated the latter part of the year in his Williams FW07 was eliminated from contention immediately with battery problems. The fast but fragile turbocharged Renault of René Arnoux led initially but dropped out on lap 13 with engine woes. Champion-elect Jody Scheckter thus inherited the lead with his Ferrari stablemate Gilles Villeneuve on his tail; Villeneuve could keep his championship hopes alive by passing but he’d given his word that he wouldn’t which Scheckter knew was enough. Jacques Laffite’s Ligier clung onto their tails heroically and with it threatened to keep the title open, but he dropped out late on with his own engine maladies. Topping it all off it was Monza favourite Clay Regazzoni who completed the podium – for a time it looked like he might deprive Ferrari in a late charge, but at the very last fuel starvation kept him away.
1988: Written in the stars
Only once in 1988 did a McLaren not win a Grand Prix. And it simply had to be Ferrari at Monza that denied it. For the most part it looked a mile off though as the McLaren Hondas of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost were imperious as usual and disappeared into their own race. Even as Prost dropped out there wasn’t much hope for the home team. But Senna had been spendthrift with his fuel in the battle and had to tail off drastically. The Ferraris, Michele Alboreto chasing Gerhard Berger, closed in. Still though it looked like Senna would hang on – just. But two laps shy of what would have become a clean sweep Senna took one chance too many lapping Jean-Louis Schlesser’s Williams who had run wide. Schlesser’s front-left wheel clipped the McLaren’s rear-right and Senna was sent into a gentle pivot and out. The Ferraris in front of their scarcely believing public were set fair. It also was mere weeks after the Commendatore Enzo Ferrari had passed away. Some things are meant to be.
1996: Tyred and emotional
This was Michael Schumacher’s third win of his impressive first year at Ferrari, and his first in front of an adoring tifosi. It was a bizarre affair, due to temporary tyre barriers erected at some of the chicanes amid concerns about excessive kerb-hopping – particularly when a piece of concrete was thrown into Jacques Villeneuve’s rear wing. Yet in the race’s early laps it seemed competitors could barely keep away from the new hazards. Both Williams clipped them – Damon Hill was out and Villeneuve severely delayed. Both McLarens were damaged by the car ahead flicking tyres into their paths. This left Schumacher, from running sixth on lap one, shadowing former Ferrari favourite Jean Alesi for the lead. It was resolved in familiar style. The Ferrari had two laps’ more fuel and then Schumacher did his party trick of scintillating in-laps to vault into the lead at the stops. Late on Schumacher clouted one of the tyre barriers himself – and carried on like nothing had happened. It underlined that this was his day.
2004: Wiping the floor
By the 2004 Italian Grand Prix Ferrari’s astonishing run of championship domination was entering its final chapter. But at Monza it left a galling reminder of how crushing its domination was. For the first time ever for an F1 race at Monza, the track was wet, or rather damp after a pre-race shower. This gave Ferrari a conundrum as its Bridgestone tyres didn’t quite have the window of the Michelins of its rivals. Michael Schumacher started on dry weather tyres and spun down to 15th on lap 1. Rubens Barrichello led on intermediate tyres but had to pit early and dropped to ninth. It looked that for once the Ferraris would be beaten. But that reckoned without the Ferrari’s pace advantage as the red pair simply cruised through the field with minimum fuss, routinely going two seconds a lap faster than all their rivals. Barrichello beat Schumacher home by 1.3s; the next best – Jenson Button’s BAR – wasn’t even within 10s of the win.
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