Charles Leclerc Ignores Max Verstappen’s Valuable Advice to Raise Money for Victims in Imola Amid Disastrous Tragedy

Before the recently concluded Monaco GP, F1 went through a 1-week break. The circus was supposed to move to Imola, but owing to the devastating floods in the Emilia-Romagna region, F1 canceled the race. Since then, from the F1 management and Ferrari to drivers like Lando Norris and Max Verstappen have contributed in their own way to send help. Charles Leclerc is the latest to join the brigade. However, he ignored Max’s advice to keep a valuable possession safe to raise funds.

The region of Emilia-Romagna is especially dear to the Ferrari family, as it is the home to their factory in Maranello. As the incessant rains continued to swell the rivers in the region, causing them to overflow, the entire north of Italy came to a halt. The Italian motorsport team immediately sprung into action, announcing a donation of 1 million Euros (1.07 million USD) for the rescue operations in the affected area. Later, Lando Norris did a subathon on his Twitch channel, donating $1,000 for every 250 subs.

Charles Leclerc ignores Max Verstappen’s advice to put a valuable possession on auction

Following the conclusion of the Monaco GP, cameras picked up Max and Charles sharing a friendly banter. The Dutchman was in awe of the special race suit the Ferrari drivers wore as a tribute to the legacy race. Referring to the robbery incident Charles was recently involved in, Max told him to keep the race suit safe at home. The duo shared a hearty laugh after the comment. However, it looks like the Monegasque is ready to ignore that advice to put the race suit, along with three other lots for an online auction.

On a video message posted on Twitter, Leclerc said, “After the tragedy that happened in Italy in Emilia Romagna with floodings recently, I decided to sell all my racing kits from my home Grand Prix. So, it’s a very special one. It was raining, so you can see everything is still a little bit dirty. But, together with Sotheby’s, we have organized an auction. There will be 4 lots- the gloves that I wore during the race, the racing shoes that I wore during the race, of course, the racing suit together with the fireproof underwears, and finally, my racing helmet from the race. So, I hope we can collect as much money as possible in order to help the people in need.”

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The auction will start tomorrow (2nd of June) on Sotheby’s official website and close on 6th of June. The race helmet, according to Sotheby’s, is especially close to Charles’ heart as he designed it himself along the lines of his dad, Herve’s own race helmet, from back in the day.

Max Verstappen found a unique way to contribute to the flood rescue

Max’s love for sim racing is not an unknown fact. When not racing on the track IRL, the Dutchman often takes part in renowned virtual races. In fact, he is part of an online racing team called Team Redline. Following the devastation in Emilia Romagna, Verstappen came up with the idea of raising funds with a charity racing stream.

His Team Redline teammate Atze Kerkhof, as per SI, recently revealed, “Max himself came up with the idea of organizing a sim race so that there is still something to do this weekend for the fans, but also to draw attention to what is happening in Emilia-Romagna and to support the people affected by the severe weather.”

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F1 will now move on to Barcelona, where Red Bull and Ferrari are ready to field their first big set of changes. Do you think Ferrari will become more capable of competing for the top spot with these upgrades? Or will Red Bull pull further away from the competition?