Despite “Last Laugh”, Fred Vasseur’s Prank Bites Dust as Carlos Sainz’s Swiftness Saves Him

It’s that time of the year again. No, not Christmas. Formula 1 has returned to the ‘Temple of Speed’ and Ferrari‘s home ground. The Italian GP is upon us with both Friday practice sessions concluded. But before the weekend proceedings began, Ferrari was already celebrating. The occasion was Carlos Sainz’s 29th birthday. Amid all the celebrations, Team Principal Frederic Vasseur tried to pull a fast one on Sainz only to be foiled by the Spaniard’s lightning-quick reflexes.

The Ferrari driver is ringing in his 29th at the best circuit possible (apart from his home race in Spain) in terms of the amount of love he’ll receive from Tifosi. Though his girlfriend, Rebecca Donaldson didn’t make a public wish, his team, pulled all the stops to make this one a memorable birthday. The entire team gathered in their motorhome and a large cake was presented for his hand to wield the knife on.

As soon as everyone started singing for the birthday boy, he bent down to blow the candles on the cake. Seeing this opening of decorating the cake with Sainz’s face, Vasseur tried to push the Spaniard’s head into it. But all the neck training that an F1 driver has to do came in handy as his head didn’t even budge from its place. That, along with his quick reflexes, saved the world of a few liters of water that would’ve gone into washing the cake off his face. All Vasseur could do was laugh and rue the missed opportunity.

Right after this, Sainz started a speech. He said, “It’s even a bigger pleasure here in Monza and an even more to celebrate…”. Midway through this sentence, the boom mic which is used to being out of the frame popped right in front of his face, disrupting his short speech, courtesy of Vasseur, again. The camera then panned to the door where the Frenchman was making the boom operator’s job a tough one by pushing the equipment towards Sainz’s face. The scuderiaferrari Instagram page posted a video of the whole hilarity, captioning it, “Fred always gets the last laugh 😂 🎂”.

Luckily, Sainz’s racer reflexes clearly kicked in at the right time to avoid cake-face. But what about the red-faced situation that he has when his SF-23 leaves him stranded among the midfielders? Even that might change now.

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Carlos Sainz outclasses both Red Bulls to top the FP2 time charts at the Italian GP

Gone are the 2022 days when Ferrari provided some competition to the Red Bulls. Or are they? Is Ferrari on its way back to the top? Carlos Sainz seems to be having a field day at Monza today. He secured P2 in FP1, only 0.046 seconds behind Max Verstappen. And he’s bettered that in FP2.

The Spaniard has topped the time charts with a time of 1:21.355, 0.276 seconds quicker than the Dutchman, in P5. His FP2 time is also a whopping 1.302 seconds quicker than Verstappen’s FP1 lap.

Are these practice laps giving an accurate representation of what is to come in the rest of the season or is it just because the SF-23 is suited for a circuit like Monza?

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