Vettel hopes Ferrari ‘can be back to normal’ at home F1 race

Sebastian Vettel is hopeful Ferrari can improve its form at its home Formula 1 race at Monza following a torrid Belgian Grand Prix last weekend.

Ferrari suffered one of its worst weekends in years last time out at Spa-Francorchamps, with both Vettel and Charles Leclerc failing to finish inside the top ten on pure performance - having seen both cars fail to make it into Q3 as well.

Ferrari celebrates its home race at Monza this weekend and while no fans will be present, Vettel says the pressure is still on to perform.

“Well I’m not going to lie, it’s not going to be an easy weekend for us,” Vettel said. “I think it’s very difficult to expect a big change from last weekend. Having said that, last weekend we were a little bit worse off that normal so I hope we can be back to normal, but we also know that these types of tracks do hurt us by nature, so we will see.

“We’re here to fight and we’re here to fight for the tifosi as well and we are doing the utmost we can. But expectations are always a big word, especially here being in Monza, so it will be very difficult this year.

"We are not having the support from the fans around the track but we will do everything we can to put the best race weekend we can together.”

Team-mate Leclerc is less optimistic about his chances this weekend and expects Ferrari to struggle as much as it did in Belgium, but remains hopeful of an upturn in form at the second Italian race at Mugello next week.

“I think we’ll have to wait until we arrive in Mugello which should be a track where we will see a bit more of the realistic picture for the end of the year because Spa and here will be very difficult for us - well Spa has been very difficult for us and Monza I expect a similar weekend but after that it should go better,” Leclerc added.

“Whether it will be enough to come back to third in the constructors’ championship I don’t know but we’ll push for this and as a driver I definitely want to believe in that third place in the constructors’ championship even if we know it’s going to be difficult.”