Imola: pre-qualifying/sprint race bullshit 2022

 Ah, the sprint race, ruining weekends since 2021.

This is, as usual, occurring between pretend qualifying and the pretend race, so we know the grid for the actual race. Why they don’t turn this needless additional event into a separate third driver championship or just ditch it is beyond me (well, that’s a lie. It’s money-grubbing).

First practice had Leclerc dominant, almost a second ahead of Sainz. More than half a second further back was Verstappen, with Magnussen a second and a half down the road and half a second up on Schumacher. Perez, Alonso, and Vettel followed more closely, with Tsunoda and Russell rounding out the top 10.

It’s worth noting Sainz has a new engine and practice was wet, with red flags and crashes and thus big gaps. Plus, times that may not be representative.

 

Qualifying ended up being something of a mostly wet farce, with a comical four red flags (give or take) and a run time that might be longer than the actual race.

The first session saw us wave goodbye to both AlphaTauris, both Williams, and Ocon. Ocon went out due to a gearbox problem which meant he couldn’t try for a better lap when the track was improving, and Albon went out when his right rear burst into flames and his tyre had a little bit of an explosion. Hamilton scraped into Q2 by four-thousandths of a second.

Sainz is a good driver, but he had a bad weekend last time and made another small error in Q2 which put his car into the barriers and out of the session (ironically, he did ‘make’ Q3). The problem for everybody else was that it was relatively dry when he went out and then rained more so nobody could improve. This was bad news for both the Mercedes drivers, Schumacher (who had looked like a possible Q3 contender for the first time in his career), Zhou (who had been very impressive in Q1), and Stroll. All were eliminated at this stage.

And so to the sharp end, which saw two more red flags (one unnecessary for the quick thinking Magnussen who managed to turn what seemed a certain gravel trap retirement into a swift return to the pits, and one necessary for Norris who actually did get beached at the last). Verstappen confounded expectations to take pole, with the much fancied Leclerc alongside him on the front row. Norris and Magnussen form a red flag duo on the second row, with Alonso and Ricciardo next up (rather tasty results for McLaren, and good for Alpine and Haas as well).

Perez and Bottas line up on the fourth row, with Vettel and the crashed out Sainz on the fifth.

 

Due to the joyous idiocy that is a sprint race weekend, the first order of business today will be a practice session.

Practice 2, 11.30am

Sprint race bullshit, 3.30pm

 

No betting from me on either. Pre-race ramble should be up sometime tomorrow.

Morris Dancer

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