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The Imola weekend was actually pretty fun,
if a little restrained for one reason or another which I’m sure we’ll get to. So
let’s look at some of the key things we learned from our trip to Emilia Romagna.
And obviously we’ve got to start with the Sprint format.
Imola hosted one of the three Sprints we’re getting this year as F1 continues to play
with the format in the interest of Maximising Audience Engagement.
And while F1 insists that people are loving the Sprints and they’ve been a huge success
and they’re feverishly planning on shoving six more into 2023,
I’m genuinely intrigued in what you guys think. I don’t normally say ‘tell me what you think in
the comments’ because it always feels like a soulless exercise in algorithm engagement but
I do feel like I must be missing something here as I’m extremely
apathetic on the whole Sprint weekend thing. So here’s what I think based on what we’ve seen
so far. The Sprint at Imola was actually pretty fun but its interestingness was somewhat inflated
by a couple of things and the consequences of having the Sprint weren’t all good.
So, what do I mean by its interestingness being inflated? Well, like Brazil last year (which was
the only decent Sprint race), it benefitted from a mixed up grid. Last year, Hamilton ended up having
to start from the back after a penalty and we got to watch him carve his way through the field.
At Imola, a rainy qualifying session put cars a little bit out of order, with regards to their dry
pace. Sainz in particular should have started a lot higher if he hadn’t crashed, but having a wet
quali with a lot of red flags did give opportunity to some drivers and misfortune to others.
So we got a lot of overtaking and passes in the Sprint, which isn’t what we usually see in these
truncated races, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute. But a lot of these overtakes were powered
by an incredibly potent DRS zone up to turn 2. It was generally agreed the DRS was a bit
too powerful as it was making passes incredibly easy once cars got within a second of each other.
We’ll get to DRS in a little bit, but the point is the action we saw in the S print
was exaggerated by circumstance and wasn’t particularly indicative of how Sprints
produce interesting sessions in general. Furthermore, what the Sprint actually did
was turn an interesting and mixed up grid into a fairly normal grid
for the race. Sainz got himself onto the second row and all the cars with a decent bit of pace
moved themselves forward into their ‘rightful’ positions for the race start, which meant we
gave up some action in the Race for the Sprint. Now, obviously if we’d had a normal weekend,
the qualifying session would have been on the Saturday and in the dry,
not the wet. So maybe the grid wouldn’t have been mixed up either way and in this
case having the Sprint where it was gave us some weekend action we wouldn’t have normally seen.
But, in general, a Sprint between qualifying and the race will tend to unshuffle any interesting
outcomes in qualifying. If a championship contender has to start from the back,
then they’ll probably start near the front for the actual race if there’s a Sprint in the middle.
Is this a good thing? I guess it depends if you care whether you see the action
in the race or in the sprint. If you don’t really care because you’re going to watch both then it
might not matter to you. But I’m wary of taking action away from the Grand Prix, which F1 insists
must remain the focal point of the weekend. In general, the Sprints won’t encourage much
action without an interesting qualifying simply because it’s too short to allow
strategy to come into play much and the reward to attempting overtakes is quite small compared
to the risk for ballsing it up and dropping down the order. Without the ease of a long DRS zone,
you’re more likely to stay in order, more or less. But look, I’m willing to keep seeing how it’s
going. I don’t hate it. I just think it’s a bit of a waste of time. And also we only get
30 mins of F1 action on a Saturday and 60 minutes on Friday. Which also seems weird.
Anyway, like I said, I’m interested in what you think because I’m not
convinced yet on ‘overwhelming success’. Right, let’s talk about overtaking.
Because watching both the Sprint and the Race I had thoughts about race
tracks in general and the 2022 rules. Now we did see some bold overtakes at
several points on the track. I think Bottas had a crack at someone just about everywhere.
That man is wreaking revenge on beans because he is firing on all cylinders right now.
But despite such antics, for the most part overtaking was limited to just one stop - turn 2,
the first real corner on the track. And in the past we’ve complained a lot about circuits and how
there aren’t enough overtaking spots and how there’s really only one decent place to pass and…
you know what? I think it’s actually ok if there’s only one proper overtaking spot.
And I think it’s OK IF the cars can follow each other which, lord help me, they really can do
this year. Cars would have a go into turn 2, DRS or not, and if they didn’t manage it,
they’d continue to chase the car through the whole lap, sticking close and applying pressure,
and then have another go next lap around. It was great. We witnessed skill in defence,
chasing and hassling through the lap, all building to the overtaking zone down to turn 2. It’s nice
to have multiple overtaking opportunities but we didn’t need-need them because we could still have
these battles and the potential for overtaking. These 2022 regulations are currently working
better than we hoped and this gives us hope for lots of circuits on the calendar. Dud circuits
can spring back to life. I mean, let’s face it, Imola isn’t exactly an overtaking oasis but here
it felt extremely possible, even without the DRS. And let’s talk about the DRS. It was re- activated
much later than expected after the track dried enough to warrant switching to dry tyres.
The whole field had traded intermediates for mediums by lap 20 but the DRS wasn’t activated
until lap 34, which left a lot of scratched heads. Now, last year there was an argument that DRS was
activated too soon and the dry line was a bit too narrow, resulting in the collision
between Russell and Bottas. This year, they were perhaps a little over cautious.
But what we did get was an opportunity to see how these new cars race without it. I think a lot of
people are looking to a future where perhaps DRS is removed or reduced and we got essentially 15
dry laps of DRS racing to evaluate. And you know what? It wasn’t bad. As
I said before, the cars can stay close so they could still threaten each other into
turn 2 and occasionally at other parts of the lap. It was still a little TOO
hard to overtake maybe, particularly as the track was still damp off line but actually,
it does leave me optimistic that we’d get decent racing without it at a track that allows for it.
Once DRS was finally activated there weren't a lot of cars close enough to take advantage of it and
the Hamilton, Gasly, Albon train remained the main focus of attention. And even with DRS back on,
they weren’t able to make moves on each other by that point in the tricky conditions.
Leclerc also found himself struggling to make headway. In the sprint he got the jump
on Verstappen and held him off for most of the race. In the grand prix he fell behind
both Red Bulls at the start and was unable to attack Perez successfully. Wet or Dry,
DRS or not, Leclerc didn’t have enough in him to have a proper go at Perez without risk, so kept
a couple of seconds distance as the Ferrari struggled more at keeping life in its tyres.
That’s what cost Leclerc the Sprint victory. But Ferrari opting to try a different strategy
towards the end of the race gave us a couple of interesting things to ponder.
The first is that the cold tyre lap out of the pits is still very real and still a crucial part
of making strategies work. Leclerc was able to stop for soft tyres and get out ahead of Norris,
but Norris then overtook him pretty easily as the colder tyres this year take a little longer to
get up to full speed. So if you’re going to pit, you’re going to have to factor this tyre-warmup
phase into your calculations and strategy. And what of this late change to soft tyres
for Leclerc? Well the interesting thing in being the last person in a safe train – that
is the first person to have a pitstop sized gap behind you – is that it means everyone
ahead of you can follow in turn as each pitstop then opens up a pitstop sized gap.
But this isn’t without risk. The decision to take a stop means that any mistake,
be it with the wheel gun or in getting up to speed on your outlap, could cost you
positions. The Red Bulls could have tootled along and finished the race on mediums but they clearly
saw enough threat from Leclerc and his softs to take the pitstop and mitigate that risk.
And Leclerc actually did look much racier on the softs than Perez did. And he finally
had an opportunity to maybe grab that second place. But, in hassling Perez through a part
of the track he’d noticed Checo was slower on, he span. So that was the end of that.
But the interesting point to note was the risk Leclerc took.
This whole weekend we’d seen a pretty risk averse Leclerc. He kept it on the track, he didn’t push
to overtake Perez when it didn’t look possible without taking a chance. He’s got a big lead in
the championship and taking hom points for 3rd was much more valuable than pushing for three more.
So when he did decide to push a bit, he made an error which ended up costing him seven points
instead. Maybe a lesson learned, but hopefully not enough to discourage Leclerc from taking
risks in future. He’s a very calculated driver and that could very well bring him the title.
But it looks like we’re going to see him and Max together on track a lot,
and if Max knows Charles will tend to take the safe option, that could be an area to exploit.
Seeing these two together this year will continue to be fascinating and Verstappen is
extremely fast and will take more risks to claw back those points.
And one quick point to finish on: Bottas is thriving this year.
He said he’s really enjoying being team leader and being more actively involved in the direction
of setup and developments and being the focal point of decisions being made at Alfa Romeo.
Perhaps that’s exactly the kind of thing he needed to shine, rather than
driving FOR what was very much Lewis’s team. Obviously Bottas was a key part of Mercedes’s
development and understanding, but this is another level. It’s been a joy to watch him on
track getting every point that Alfa can reach. And now, onto Miami. A circuit so contrived
they’ve made a fake harbour from which no boat can escape. Can’t wait.
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