Italy: post-race analysis 2022
Last week I had two rotten slices of luck that buggered an otherwise well-judged 8.5 shot. This time around it was another obvious piece of misfortune with half a dozen laps to go. Ho hum.
Off the line Norris left his handbrake on but recovered well to only drop a handful of places. Verstappen, meanwhile, leapt up three places on the first lap.
There was always the air of an inevitable Verstappen victory, and so it proved. An early VSC enabled Leclerc to get a cheap stop but it was too early to make a one stop work. By contrast, Verstappen merrily trundled on his soft tyres and seemed unassailable.
Further back, Sainz was doing great work carving through the field, and Hamilton was making slightly steadier progress. For a long time, Ricciardo led a DRS train with Gasly right behind him. The Frenchman’s undercut attempt was hamstrung by a slow stop which allowed Ricciardo to pit and retain the tantalisingly small lead. Later, DRS was broken as Hamilton made his way through the field.
Leclerc’s second stop had placed him in a clear 2nd spot, and Verstappen was destined to win. This was confirmed absolutely when the safety car emerged on lap 47/53. It came because Ricciardo’s car had decided to stop working. My bet, which had been green all race long until that point, was undone by bad luck. Again.
I’m quite looking forward to my next fluke because getting two well-judged bets buggered by misfortune is quite tiresome.
Everybody pitted but there were insufficient laps to resume racing and Verstappen’s inexorable triumph duly came to the sound of whistles and boos from the Monza crowd. Leclerc got 2nd and Russell joined them on the podium.
Sainz was 4th, which is pretty good considering he started way down the grid, and was followed by fellow penalised chap Hamilton who also had a good race. Perez, with a smaller penalty ended up 6th although he did have a late stop pre-safety car which may have rather hampered his result.
Norris ended up 7th, which means a net gain for McLaren on their Alpine rivals (Alonso retired, incidentally) but the loss of Ricciardo (having driven solidly all race) is a bit rough. Gasly followed, and in 9th was debutant Nyck De Vries (whose name I previously spelt wrong, sorry). He did well to keep Zhou Guanyu behind him for a long time, and very well to score on his debut having only discovered he’d be racing on the Saturday morning. Speaking of the Chinese driver, he ended up 10th.
Not a classic race. Had some areas of interest but the overtaking difficulty (Gasly was routinely just half a second off Ricciardo but could not make a pass stick) and Verstappen’s utter dominance did rather suck out some of the entertainment.
The only way the Dutchman fails to retain his title is if he goes on a six month holiday. And even then he might win.
The next race is in three weeks, in Singapore.
Morris Dancer
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