Ahead of this weekends Chinese Grand Prix Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc tackled the Shanghai International Circuit on foot, walking the 5.451 kilometres of asphalt that represents the Chinese symbol “shang” which forms the basis of the name Shanghai.
Sunday’s race will be race number 1000 in the history of Formula 1 and Sebastian Vettel believes this weekend marks an important this race.
“I think this is an important weekend and I’ve been asked many times which is the race I remember best as a spectator, before I became a driver. There’s not just one: I remember when Ayrton Senna won the Brazilian Grand Prix (in 1991). I was a kid and watched Formula 1 with my father. I remember I was struck by the fact that, after the chequered flag, the driver was so tired that he was struggling to stand up. The other races I remember well were the key moments in Michael Schumacher’s career.”
Sebastian went on to say he felt confident about Sunday’s race, referring to the colours that are considered lucky in China and are also found on the SF90. “I think we have a good car and also, red and yellow bring good luck here. Let’s hope we get to see a lot of red and yellow on Sunday!”
Charles Leclerc’s on the other-hand is seemingly more reserved preferring to wait and see how the car performs in free practice before.
“I don’t have any particular expectations for this race at the moment, but I’m quite sure we will discover our true potential after free practice and even more so after qualifying. Coming to China from Bahrain, the mood in the team is obviously very positive. I think we need to keep this energy going and hopefully we can have a good weekend, just as we did at Sakhir before the issue. The positive thing is that we have understood what the problem was and we do not expect it to happen anymore.”
