The Saturday in F1 Italian GP saw three teams get close to each other but Red Bull dropping off pace, making the title fight interesting.
It was dry all-through on Saturday of F1 Italian GP at Monza and only three teams had the fight in the end for pole with the likes of McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari having a shot at the top spot, leaving Red Bull far behind in the pecking order.
In fact, they were off from pole by 0.6s margin and struggled all-through qualifying. For McLaren, it was another box ticked with a 1-2 finish where Lando Norris didn’t feel as comfortable and still managed to put the car on pole due to the raw pace.
He is confident for the race but knows others can pounce on them and is still not thinking as much about the world championship scene, even though Red Bull are far off. Oscar Piastri felt he could have done more to eliminate some of the mistakes he did.
The Mercedes camp had George Russell smile as much especially after missing out on parts and track time due to various troubles. His teammate Lewis Hamilton was furious at himself after not being able to pull up the screws when most needed.
The Ferrari side were 50-50 as well where Charles Leclerc felt he could have fought for pole if not for a certain issue to creep back in qualifying after it felt sorted in FP3. Carlos Sainz reckoned, it was as much they could have done in a close fight.
As noted above, Red Bull severely lacked pace as both Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez complained of similar balance problems. As for Aston Martin, Fernando Alonso thought 11th place was more than what they had anticipated.
Norris: “Very, because I think it’s probably been, like everyone’s seen, the closest build-up, FP1, FP2, FP3… I think we just looked as good as the others, nothing more, nothing less, honestly. So yeah, just expected a tough qualifying, and it was, for sure. But I think for us to come away with a 1-2, to come away with another pole, was probably not quite what we were expecting, but in a good way, of course. Yeah, a good qualifying, I wouldn’t say the cleanest. Just difficult to put laps together around here, and when the margins are so small, you try and go for everything, but you can also pay a price, you know? So risk-reward in a lot of corners. But I think the risk that we had through it and the set-up changes and things we made into qualifying seemed to have made a good amount of progress, and we seem very quick. It just didn’t feel like a nailed lap. I think all of us, as drivers, when we go out in quali, you just want to put together a perfect lap.
“You want everything to flow. I tried pushing the braking a bit more for one, and I actually got one so much better. I then smashed the inside kerb of Turn 2, because I turned in too early. So I was about tenth and a half down just after Turn 1. So I was kind of like, ‘eek, it’s over already before it even starts’. And I didn’t really expect to gain it. But then I nailed the second chicane and gained one and a half tenths back straight away. And then just made a couple of hundredths of a gain in every corner from that point on. So it just didn’t feel like a nailed lap. It didn’t feel as good as my lap last weekend, but clearly still good enough for pole, which is a nice feeling. Honestly, I think when you look back to Zandvoort, you could say yes. There’s enough evidence that led us to believe we could have a very, very strong race. Here, less so, just because it’s been so close, but we’re still first and second, which means we have a good car, and that normally translates well into a good race car. But I think tomorrow there are more question marks with, you know, graining and degradation and things like that.
“You know, everyone’s 4-1-2 with tyres and probably a little bit more nervous of what can happen and what might happen. But we’re in the best position for it. So excited to see what we can do. for sure. It’s a good opportunity. I mean, I expect him to come through and probably be behind us quite quickly. Their race pace looked very strong on Friday. They were on the better side of the graining and the degradation, so I expect them to probably be a bit more hopeful tomorrow. For some reason, they just didn’t seem to take those steps forward through qualifying. He still seemed quick, like in Q2 he was right there and ended up quicker than me, even on a used tyre. And even his gap to Pérez wasn’t as big as what it normally is. So I don’t know if he just struggled more with something or just didn’t put good enough laps in, but… Yeah, it’ll be for a reason, I’m sure. And yeah, we need to try and make the most of that.”
Piastri: “I think the car was very strong. The first lap I did in Q3 was solid. A couple of little things to work on, but, yeah, the second lap just wasn’t as good as it needed to be, really. A similar story in Turn 1, really, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of my lap. Had a big wheel spin out of Turn 1, and it was a bit of a mess from there. Yeah, I just need to tidy it up a little bit at the end. But the car was performing well. I don’t think, after practice, it certainly wasn’t guaranteed to have this result. I think we very easily felt like we could have ended up, you know, seventh or eighth if we didn’t get it quite right.
“So to come away on the front row is a very good result for the team. I mean, I think you know the start is always a good opportunity. It’s a long run to Turn 1 here. Obviously we, as a team, we need to do a bit of a better job than last week unless we plan on getting bad starts and just creating a roadblock. That is an opportunity but there will be more opportunities tomorrow. I think, you know, it will… The strategy is still a bit of a question mark. No one’s done really more than 10 laps on a set of tyres. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens. So I think it’ll be a pretty interesting one, even after the first lap.”
Russell: “It was a very up and down weekend, obviously. Missed a lot yesterday, which put me really on the back foot and had to make a lot of changes from FP3 into qualifying because that was really my first proper session out on track. And Q1 and Q2 was really, really messy. I wasn’t confident, didn’t feel good in the car and just sort of scraped through the session. And then suddenly I managed to get it in the sweet spot for Q3. Both my laps, I think I was third or fourth,. and obviously ended up third. So pretty pleased with that result and it’s kind of exciting to see how close it is with everyone. I mean, I don’t really know what to expect because I’ve just not really done the laps, to be honest.
“So I’ll just have to trust my instincts and go from there, really, and adapt on the fly. So as I said, I’m really, really pleased to be lining up P3 after the day we’ve had, and the car definitely seems to have potential. If they make a start like last week, then we’ve got a chance, I think. But if they have a good start, then I think it’ll be very difficult. You know, McLaren have done an incredible job these recent races, they are the team to beat. Seemingly, everywhere we go, they’ve been the quickest, and that’s probably been the case since… As long as I can remember, really. I’ve got a short memory, but it seems like a long time.”
Verstappen: “For whatever reason in Q3 I picked up a lot of understeer on both tyre sets and this is something that I don’t understand at the moment. It was just not drivable anymore. I couldn’t attack any corner, so that’s something that is very weird. I mean, going four tenths slower than what you did in Q2 is not normal. I already had the same problem on the lap before on the other tyre set, so it was just not working for whatever reason. The balance difference that I had in Q3 was very weird. Never experienced something like that before. It’s just weird that it suddenly happened because in Q1, Q2 it was not like that. But our car is extremely tricky to drive from entry to mid-corner. There’s a massive balance shift at the moment, so if you fix one thing, it creates another problem, so you have to be quite careful with that as well. It doesn’t help that we don’t have a Monza wing, so if you’re trimming your wing a lot, then that’s not the most efficient way of doing that, but the balance issues that I’m experiencing now I’ve had for a long time. Well, it’s just what it is. I mean, I’m trying to do the best I can, and more than that, I cannot do.”
Leclerc: “It is very frustrating, because we were close, but again, it was not enough, and in Turn 1-2-3-4-5, we’ve had exactly the same issue since FP1 and FP2 – I just cannot rotate the car [in the chicanes]. For some reason in FP3, there wasn’t a problem anymore but then in qualifying, it came back, so that is what is frustrating because we lose two-and-a-half tenths in four corners at the beginning of the lap and then to come back is very difficult. But it is the way it is, and we’ve got to focus on the race, and I don’t expect to have as much of an issue tomorrow in Turns 1/2 and 4/5, and hopefully that will help. I want to look forward, backward there are guys that are super quick, that I expected to be in front of us today, but there weren’t too many differences in pace apart from Lewis who had really good pace in FP2, but he did something and was a bit too slow, I think we will have similar pace in the race. I think Red Bull will be strong, however, I don’t expect them to be much stronger than we are in the race. So we shouldn’t look backwards and try to look forward and hopefully go and win the race. We will try to have a good start and then use the DRS to stay with the McLarens, which we expect to be very, very strong. It will be a tyre management race, but we all have similar pace.”
Hamilton: “I wasn’t expecting more but I was expecting to do a better job than I did. The first session, we were further up than we anticipated, the second one, obviously, we were quickest. There are still areas to improve and in the third, I just didn’t do the job. I just didn’t extract the maximum. Turn 1 and 2, I lost a tenth and a half to my previous Q2 lap, and then lost another tenth in Turn 11. So that’s just absolutely ridiculous from my side, completely unacceptable, and it’s just totally me, nobody else. So far behind now. The chance that of fighting for a race win is out the window. I think tomorrow just got to try and recover as much as I can, and see if I can get past the Ferraris, and see if I can try challenging to get to the podium.”
Alonso: “We were heading into Qualifying feeling a little pessimistic, so all in all we have to be happy with P11. The car is struggling a bit here so to be so close to Q3 is a good sign. We are going into the unknown tomorrow and it won’t be easy, but a top ten finish is still the target.”
The Top 10 also saw Williams’ Alexander Albon make it in along with Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg in a better show from them. Their teammates Franco Colapinto and Kevin Magnussen expected a bit more, especially for the Argentine whose Q1 was compromised.
A slight off left him out of Q1 when he could have done more. That off also caught out Magnussen, but he was inside Q2 already. The Visa Cash App RB camp had divided days too, with Daniel Ricciardo feeling well but not Yuki Tsunoda in Q1.
It was a better day for Alpine pair of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon as well, who reckoned some overnight work helped them gain few tenths. But it was not the day for Kick Sauber pair of Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu who were last in the order.
Colapinto: “It was special to do my first Qualifying session in F1. I’ve enjoyed every moment of the weekend so far. Unfortunately, I made a little mistake on my second push which cost me the chance to do a good second lap. It was looking promising as I was in a good place after my first lap and, of course, working towards making a step on the second push. The car was very competitive, and I think it was possible to go through to Q2 today. However, this is just the start and there are things I still need to work on with only having a few laps in an F1 car. I’m a bit frustrated right now but I know there is a lot of potential, and the team has been working hard to make the car suit me a bit better. Tomorrow will provide a great opportunity to learn more about the car and tyres as well as managing a full race distance in F1. Let’s see how it goes.”
Ocon: “Some positives to take from today, we have made some changes overnight that seemed to have done the trick. The car felt better since yesterday and more like our performance pre-Zandvoort. We have not fully understood why, so need to investigate this further. It was always going to be a challenging weekend for us at Monza, but I think the hard work the team has put in overnight paid off and we have made a step in the right direction. Although, we have not put in a fully clean lap so left a bit of performance on the table and maybe even could have moved a few positions up further. Now we need to work on our strategy for tomorrow, to make sure we get it right. It will be interesting to see what will happen as the teams don’t have too much representative data on the long runs yet and with the new tarmac there will be some unknowns. We will see how tomorrow goes and we will make sure we put ourselves in a position to fight and hopefully be able to gain positions.”
Tsunoda: “It was tough today. Yesterday we started pretty far off the pace, and then session by session we managed to close the gap towards the midfield, but unfortunately, it’s clearly not enough. I’m frustrated, there are some things unclear, so we need to understand what’s going on, as throughout the weekend we don’t have an easy car to drive. I’m pretty happy with the lap I did in qualifying, but I think we’re still missing something, as generally this weekend I’m feeling a lack of pace. There are differences across the cars, so surely there are a lot of things to learn. I’ll do my best tomorrow.”
Magnussen: “In Q1, the Williams went off in front of me and there was so much dust I didn’t know if he was off the track or on – I couldn’t see anything – so that lap was ruined. It’s very important to get a slipstream here, it can give you three tenths, and I went out behind the two Alpines, but they did a prep lap, so I ended up without a tow. That margin is what I’m missing for Q3 but P13 isn’t too far away from the top 10 and we can do something from there.”
Bottas: “It feels there was something more we could have achieved today, so I’m disappointed to be in P19: the first push lap I did was quite decent, and with the track improvement, I had every possibility to make it into Q2, only for the yellow flag towards the end of Q1 to take away that chance from us. The third practice session was more difficult than yesterday, so we opted to revert to the Friday settings for qualifying. The feeling was much better but, in the end, it was all down to luck and, unfortunately, the last run got halted by a yellow flag, so I couldn’t improve much. A question mark remains on where we could have ended up, as overall it seems like we are in a slightly better position than last weekend. Looking at tomorrow, tyre management will be crucial – hopefully, there’ll be some opportunities to catch our rivals and try and improve our positions on track.”
Here’s how F1 Italian GP qualifying panned out
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact