Africa-Press – South-Africa. Charles Leclerc secured a brilliant pole position in front of Ferrari’s adoring fans at Monza. The Monegasque set a blistering time to take the position from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz.
Verstappen and Sainz are among nine drivers who will be taking grid penalties for power unit-related issues.
Here are three talking points from qualifying for tomorrow’s Italian Grand Prix.
Ferrari throwing everything at Monza
Coming into the race weekend, it was widely assumed that Verstappen and Red Bull would be the ones to beat, but no one expected Ferrari to be as competitive as they were around the ‘Cathedral of Speed’. With their cars adopting an extremely low downforce setup, Leclerc and Sainz set about qualifying with one goal: secure pole.
And they did!
Leclerc’s final lap was 0.145 seconds quicker than Sainz’s, and 0.268sec better than Verstappen’s. In the second Red Bull, Sergio Perez was more than a second off the pace.
Ferrari had the high-speed edge over Red Bull, with Sainz registering a 348km/h top speed through the speed trap – 6km/h faster than Verstappen.
Ferrari came to Monza knowing full well that the championship is effectively over, but they wanted to give the Tifosi something to cheer about on their home ground, and they did.
Red Bull goes with… downforce?
One can almost question Red Bull’s thinking behind their approach to this weekend’s race. Monza is the fastest track on the circuit, yet they opted to run a substantially bigger rear wing than Ferrari. The result? More downforce. And more downforce means a lower top speed.
Though 6km/h may not seem like much, it has a big impact on a circuit where the average speed over a single lap is 264km/h, and 80% of it is completed under full throttle. Sure, the rear wing gave Red Bull a 10km/h advantage through some corners, but it is not enough. And it wasn’t.
READ: Max Verstappen takes 5-place grid penalty for fitting new engine in Italy
Red Bull probably thought they’d have the speed advantage – again – as they did in Belgium two weeks ago, but Monza is an entirely different track. And they did not bargain on Ferrari dialling the downforce down.
The error in judgment is one of a few flaws in Red Bull’s otherwise near-impenetrable 2022 armour.
De Vries proves a point
What a weekend for Mercedes-backed Nyck de Vries. On Friday, he replaced Sebastian Vettel at Aston Martin for the first practice session. The next day, he gets called up to Williams to replace Alex Albon, who is undergoing treatment for appendicitis. Both Aston Martin and Williams have close ties with Mercedes-AMG and its team boss, Toto Wolff.
But De Vries’ call-up highlighted a clear problem: Nicholas Latifi needs to go.
Latifi has been with Williams since 2019, but his seat is under severe threat as the team grows impatient with him. And it seems that not even his dad’s billions can secure it for 2023. One of the drivers touted to replace him possibly is De Vries, who has proven that he has the pace on his first F1 GP outing.
Either that, or Latifi is not as great as he makes himself out to be. When Albon returned to F1 at the start of the year, he had comprehensively outperformed Latifi throughout the season. And now De Vries has done the same.
Any bets on De Vries joining Williams next year?
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