2022 Italian Grand Prix - Saturday
THE ROAD TO POLE
- Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, in a special yellow tribute livery, claimed a 17th career pole position and his eighth of the season, in front of the Scuderia’s home crowd. The Monegasque driver qualified in front of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and the other Ferrari of Carlos Sainz (although the start order tomorrow will be affected by grid penalties).
- The weather was warm and dry, with ambient temperatures of 30 degrees centigrade and track temperatures of 41 degrees centigrade during qualifying.
- All the drivers used the P Zero Red soft tyre from start to finish of qualifying. Both the Red Bulls and Ferraris used just one set to get through Q1 and Q2. The soft tyres proved well-suited to the qualifying hour in Monza, showing a strong and consistent level of grip.
- The FP3 session took place earlier this afternoon, which is more representative of race conditions thanks to more comparable weather conditions and fuel loads than qualifying. This has been the case for a number of FP3 sessions this year already. Verstappen was fastest in FP3 on the soft tyre.
- Gabriel Omar Batistuta, known as the “Angel Gabriel” presented today’s Pirelli Pole Position Award. The Argentine footballer, rated as one of the greatest strikers of all time, started his career at home before making a name for himself in Italy, where he played for clubs like Fiorentina, Roma, and Inter Milan, which has enjoyed a long association with Pirelli.
STRATEGY NOTEBOOK
The 53 laps of the Pirelli-sponsored Italian Grand Prix at Monza’s “Temple of Speed” should be a one-stop race, thanks to the relatively contained degradation levels expected if the weather remains as forecast, not to mention a comparatively big pit lane time loss. The best one-stopper on paper involves starting on the soft to make the most of its initial grip, before moving onto the P Zero White Hard, which should provide a consistent and competitive performance in the predicted warm weather conditions. The alternative one-stopper consists of a longer initial stint on the P Zero Yellow Medium before then going on to the hard.
The very first grand prix at Monza, 100 years ago in 1922, was won by a Fiat 804 wearing Pirelli Superflex Cord tyres, known as the “tyre of victory”. The Superflex Cord was also sold as a tyre for road cars, with Pirelli’s tradition of transferring race technology to the road dating back as long as the history of the Monza circuit itself.
