Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing are on the brink of history, but after an interrupted day of practice, it’s tempting to believe they might be stepping back from the edge.
Verstappen was an underwhelming sixth at the end of second practice, while teammate Sergio Pérez ended the final on-track hour in the wall after understeering through the gravel at Parabolica and keeping his foot in.
The team had shown flashes of pace up to that point, and it would still feel silly to bet against Milton Keynes at this stage, but certainly the RB19’s average massive pace advantage is yet to translate to the cathedral of speed’s long straights.
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Adding spice to the mix is the changed qualifying format in action this weekend. With Verstappen’s margin reduced and a variety of challenges on the horizon, the reigning champion looks as vulnerable as he’s been all season as he vies for a record-breaking 10th straight win.
FERRARI REMAINS CAUTIOUS DESPITE STRONG FIRST DAY
Carlos Sainz topped the time sheet in second practice ahead of Lando Norris and the crashed-out Pérez, while Verstappen languished 0.276 seconds off the pace in sixth.
In what felt like the first normal practice session in months, with no rain and no sprint format to impact the results, this appeared to be a major break from the form book.
“It was a smooth day, to be honest,” Sainz said, per Racer. “As soon as we put the car on track here, for some reason it just adapted a lot better and it was a lot easier to set up and drive it per corner.
“It doesn’t mean that we are going to be P1 tomorrow and in the race, but at least the feeling is much better.”
He’s right to be cautious given Verstappen’s fastest lap was far from representative.
The Dutchman had been fractionally ahead as he hit the brakes for the first of the Lesmo turns, but as he entered the double left-hander he encountered a gaggle of slow-moving cars preparing for their own fast laps. It cost him momentum all the way down the back straight to Ascari and blew his deficit out to more than 0.4 seconds, only some of which he clawed back through Parabolica.
He asked for another run, but his team insisted he stick to the program and switch to long-run simulations, meaning we never got a true picture of his pace.
“From my side it could have probably been a little bit better today,” Verstappen said. “There is still some finetuning to do from the low speed to the high speed, but I am of course quite confident we will get there.”
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But there is some reason for Ferrari to hope Saturday won’t end up being another Verstappen waltz to pole, and it’s found in the speed trap.
While Charles Leclerc and Sainz were inside the top seven at the radar gun, clocking in at more than 345 kilometres per hour, Verstappen was down in 13th and lacking around 5 kilometres per hour.
Straight-line speed is decisive in qualifying, and while it doesn’t necessarily equal strong race pace, a car that’s slower in a straight line will have trouble overtaking in the race.
It’s perhaps too early to say, with teams still to play all their cards on Saturday, but Ferrari’s gamble to be fastest in qualifying could give them the long shot they need to grind out an unlikely podium or even victory on Sunday.
RED BULL RACING ALL-IN ON RACE PACE
But there is more than one way to win in Monza, especially if you think your opponent suffers from high tyre wear, as Ferrari has done for most of the season.
With the exception of Williams, Ferrari was running what appeared to be the most trimmed-out car on the grid on Friday. Not only does its straight-line performance demonstrate as much, but so too does its speed through the slow and high-speed corners. On neither metric was it even the second-best car behind Red Bull Racing.
RBR, on the other hand, was experimenting with finding the right trade-off between speed and downforce to get the job done on Sunday, which muddied the waters considerably when it came to writing an expected form guide.
“We have been trying a few different wing levels and I think we still need to analyse which way to go. It is sometimes a tricky thing around Monza,” Verstappen said.
Sergio Pérez’s crash with around 10 minutes to go in FP2 also disrupted any read we could get from long-run pace, with the red flag coming right in the middle of the long runs for almost every driver.
Data from Formula 1 suggested Ferrari was around 0.12 seconds per lap adrift in race trim, though Sainz said his team’s own read on the session was more pessimistic.
“Being realistic, also looking at our race pace, that’s when we started seeing the true pace of the Red Bull,” he said. “They were clearly again 0.3 seconds to 0.5 seconds ahead in race pace, and over 50-something laps that’s a lot of lap time.”
A margin that large would be significant enough to overcome a straight-line speed deficit either late in the stint or simply with a better pit-stop strategy. Ferrari’s best chance may therefore be to have two cars fighting up front — or, perhaps more to the point, not to have Pérez available to back up Verstappen.
Pérez, for his part, was unperturbed by his own crash. Not only had he got through most of his run plan, but he said he felt more comfortable in the car than usual and expects to be “in good shape and in a strong position for the rest of the weekend”.
The team might just need him to be.
Behind the leading two teams, McLaren must be pleased to be keeping its head above water at a track it’s been fearing for weeks. It’s armed itself with a variety of drag-reducing upgrades this weekend, and they appear to have done the trick to keep it in contention for big points, even if the front row and the podium appear just out of reach.
Mercedes was lukewarm on Friday night after splitting its cars between different set-ups. The team has form making big gains overnight, however, and should be right with McLaren for the rest of the weekend. Aston Martin, meanwhile, appears adrift of the leaders and has much work to do to salvage the weekend.
MIDFIELD IN THE MIX
The disrupted practice session meant it was difficult to gauge the shape of the midfield, but one thing was clear: Williams is in the mix down Monza’s super-long straights.
This was always the race earmarked in the team’s diary to score heavily. The car’s aerodynamic philosophy has for years worked well at circuits that require low-downforce, low-drag set-ups, a happy side-effect of being unable to develop enough aero load onto the car for the rest of the year’s tracks.
But whatever the reason for it, Alex Albon was putting it to good use on Friday, finishing seventh fastest in FP2.
The Thai driver was top of the speed trap, clocked at 348.1 kilometres per hour, and though he was haemorrhaging time through the corners, he was making up so much more down the straights that he ended up just inside the frontrunning pack for pure one-lap pace.
In Albon’s hands the Williams car looks like the fourth-fastest machine, behind RBR, Ferrari and McLaren but ahead of Mercedes and Aston Martin.
He’ll need to wield that to perfection on Saturday. A high qualifying position and a good first lap will be decisive to his race, which will rely on an aggressive defence ahead of potentially faster cars in race trim. Therefore the target is clear and singular: nail qualifying.
“What’s important is that we’re in the mix, but I don’t want to speak too soon,” Albon said. “For FP3 tomorrow we need to weigh up and see what everyone else is doing, helping us to understand where we want to focus on.”
Logan Sargeant, however, remained out of reach in 15th and some 0.8 second adrift of his teammate. He doesn’t need to match Albon, but he must at least crack Q2 and vie for Q3 if he’s to have any hope of scoring his maiden points at a crucial juncture in his career.
EXPECT QUALIFYING GAMES
Monza is the second circuit of the season to trial Pirelli’s alternative tyre allocation rule, which has seen every driver handed fewer tyres for the weekend and which will tweak the way qualifying works.
Unlike the usual situation in which every driver continually throws fresh softs at their cars for the grid-setting hour, everyone will be required to use certain compounds at certain times.
All drivers will use hards in Q1, mediums in Q2 and then softs in Q3.
How that might shake up the order remains to be seen, but there’s a significant pace difference between the three compounds.
Pirelli estimates the medium is around 0.4 seconds slower than the soft, while the hard is more than 1.1 seconds slower.
Bringing the hard up to working temperature range will be critical to getting the most out of it and could prove decisive in qualifying’s outcome.
So too will car positioning. We already got several examples of drivers pooling at certain parts of the track attempting to force other cars into giving them a powerful slipstream down the straights during practice. We’ve seen that sort of thing go comically wrong in the past — think about the farcical scenes at the end of Q3 in 2019, when eight of nine drivers vying for pole failed to start their final laps because they were all playing slipstream chicken.
But there is a dividend to be earnt by a team that manages well its drivers in slipstream formation. It’s always tempting to give it a go — but teams do so at their own peril.
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
The 2023 Italian Grand Prix is live and ad-break free during racing on Kayo and Fox Sports.
Final practice is from 8:30pm Saturday before qualifying at midnight.
Pre-race coverage for the Italian Grand Prix starts at 9:30pm, with lights out at 11:00pm.
