The tifosi arrived at Monza buoyed by an unlikely pole position for Charles Leclerc the night before, but even the most ardent Ferrari fan must’ve harboured a fear that they’d be going home disappointed all the same.
Those who listened to that doubtful voice would’ve at least been braced for the inevitable outcome.
It is, after all, par for the course now.
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A questionable strategy call and a lack of pace facilitated an easy Verstappen waltz to victory — all familiar stories 16 races into the season — and ironically enough a disputed decision by race control on the use of the safety car sealed the deal just when a bit of jeopardy appeared set to inject some excitement into the grand prix.
It was in some respects the prototypical race of the 2022 season which is fast hurtling towards its championship conclusion.
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FERRARI FUMBLES HOME POLE
The stage was set. Ferrari’s legion fans were in position. The team was decked out in yellow in celebration of 75 years of Ferrari. Company chairman John Elkann was on site with vice-chairman Piero Ferrari, Enzo’s last living son.
Even the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, turned up for the show.
Charles Leclerc was on pole, Verstappen was serving a grid penalty and Ferrari had a shot at winning its home race.
But the qualifying result was misleading. Ferrari had the quicker car over one lap largely because Red Bull Racing set its car up for the race in the knowledge both its drivers would be starting in the pack.
That came to bear on Sunday. Verstappen was up to second behind Leclerc by the fifth lap and began nibbling away at the gap until the fateful lap 12 and the virtual safety car.
Faced with the prospect of Verstappen using the VSC to undercut into the lead, Ferrari brought Leclerc in to cover him off, switching him to the medium tyre rather than hard and locking him into an unfancied two-stop strategy.
Leclerc’s race was done on the spot.
Was it another strategy misstep? Sort of.
Leclerc could have kept track position with the hard tyre, but the team understood early it simply had the slower car. Leclerc grinding out a defensive win was unlikely.
That pace difference was made abundantly clear at the Monegasque’s second stop, when even on fresher, softer rubber he was no match for Verstappen.
You can’t race a faster car with the same strategy, as team boss Mattia Binotto acknowledged in his post-race explanation, so while the ambitious tactics — Leclerc had to try to close 20 seconds in the last 20 laps — was a somewhat embarrassing accent on the team’s race, it was pace, not strategy that lost Ferrari the grand prix.
The team could argue that second and a very strong fourth from Carlos Sainz, having started 18th, was a good result at a track that didn’t suit the car — even though there’s a paddock suspicion the team was running its engines unusually high in search of some home satisfaction — and that would be fair enough, but it’s also just the latest sign of the team’s ongoing capitulation in a year that started so strongly.
SAFETY CAR DEPLOYMENT IN THE SPOTLIGHT AGAIN AS FIA COMES UNDER FIRE
All that said, it’s ironic that Ferrari’s strategy Hail Mary was that it could win in the event of a late-race safety car, which is exactly what it got — only to watch it bake in Verstappen’s win.
The safety car was called on lap 48 of 53 laps from the finish when Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren stopped on track with an engine problem one lap earlier.
The last five laps of the race have proved controversial.
First, the call to deploy the safety car came relatively late.
Second, the safety car picked up third-placed George Russell rather than the race leader, which delayed a possible restart because the out-of-position cars had to circulate back to behind Verstappen and Leclerc.
Third, it took unusually long to recover Ricciardo’s car.
It sparked a furore after the race, particularly among Italian fans, who wanted to see a racing finish — especially given Leclerc would have one last shot at rescuing victory.
“Today we had all the conditions to have a restart of the race,” Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto told Sky Sport Italy. “I don’t know why they waited so long.
“The FIA has been caught sleeping. Maybe they are not yet ready to deal with these situations.”
It was a stinging rebuke echoed by Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner.
“It goes against everything we’ve talked about over the last years,” he said. “The principles of what we’ve always discussed is that nobody wants to see a race finish under a safety car like that.
“Everybody had been robbed of that finish.”
The FIA explained part of the delay as being down to Ricciardo’s car being stuck in gear, which prevented it from being wheeled away and required the use of a crane.
It doesn’t explain the safety car position error, however, nor the delay in correcting the position of the cars on track.
It concluded a difficult weekend for the governing body, which was under fire from teams and drivers on Saturday for a lack of clarity around how the grid would be formed after penalties.
Further, in Sunday’s F2 race the stewards had to apologise for running Juri Vips’s race by handing him the wrong penalty — a 10-second stop-go instead of a simple 10 seconds, a massive difference.
The F3 race was also marred by Kush Maini being incorrectly given a five-second penalty for a track limits violation he didn’t commit.
The decision to abandon the race during a late red flag was also extremely controversial given it decided the championship in favour of Victor Martins, who was set to serve a time penalty at the restart.
CHAMPIONSHIP ENTERS ITS FINAL PHASE
None of that should take away from another faultless performance from Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen.
The championship leaders were faultless in the Monza cauldron united by the desire to see them fail. They took in their stride the boos and jeers of the partisan crowd after the race.
It was Verstappen’s fifth win in a row — the longest streak of his career — only one of which has come from pole position and only two of which have come from the front row. His three other wins have come from 10th, 13th and now seventh on the grid.
That’s domination by anyone’s definition — and a very, very far cry from the nip-tuck status of the championship in its opening month of racing.
The RB18 has come a long way since the start of the year, when it was overweight and more difficult to set up. It’s been honed to be more effective at more tracks, and while this was always going to be a strong circuit for a car that has such great straight-line performance, the fact it could trade some of that away for better tyre life through downforce and still control the race represents irresistible progress.
The Italian Grand Prix was Verstappen’s 31st career victory, putting him equal seventh with Nigel Mansell on the all-time winners list and one behind Fernando Alonso.
It was also his 11th win of the season, keeping him well on track to match and beat Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel’s joint record of 13 wins in a season. There are six races remaining this season.
But he won’t need all of them to claim the title. In fact he almost certainly won’t need even most of them.
The championship can be decided at the next race in Singapore. Verstappen leads by 116 points; he needs to leave Singapore with a 138-point advantage, a difference of 22.
If he can’t do it in Singapore, he just needs to ensure he doesn’t lose more than four points to Leclerc between now and the Japanese Grand Prix to win his second title.
The constructors title can’t be decided in Marina Bay, but Red Bull Racing will likely get its first shot at its first championship since 2013 in Suzuka, though the United States is the more likely decider.
It’s tempting to think that Ferrari is simply handing both titles to its rival, and there is a certain amount of truth to that given its record of unreliability and strategy mistakes.
But since the mid-season break it’s increasingly clear that, even had this second half of the season started with Verstappen and Leclerc tied on points, momentum is swinging inexorably the Dutchman’s way anyway, and he’s now at the helm of the overall better package.
POINTS ON DEBUT FOR DE VRIES
What a 48 hours for Nyck de Vries.
On Saturday morning he expected to be providing punditry on the Italian Grand Prix. Hours later he was preparing to race in it.
It was unusually good timing for him. He’d just finished an FP1 session with Aston Martin, which at least got him some track time to get his eye in.
But it was also superb timing in the context of his battle to join the grid next season, having lost his Mercedes Formula E seat when the German marque pulled out of the sport at the end of the season just finished.
And boy did he grab the chance with both hands.
He qualified an excellent 13th, which became eighth when the grid was eventually published.
From there he raced just about flawlessly, holding his own off the start and defending superbly in the race, deploying his Williams car’s excellent straight-line speed to his advantage to essentially hold that place — he finished ninth only because of the likes of Sainz, Hamilton and Perez started behind him and recovered position.
The only minor blight on his record was a reprimand for erratic driving during the safety car period — he slowed down unnecessarily as he dealt with a brake problem and an apparently malfunctioning steering wheel, for which the stewards put down to F1 inexperience and opted against a time penalty.
That meant rare points on debut, instantly putting him ahead of temporary teammate and Williams regular Nicholas Latifi, who finished 15th, in the championship standings.
Unfortunately for Latifi, it’s his career on the line should the team decide De Vries has done enough to warrant a shot.
We probably shouldn’t be all that shocked that De Vries delivered. He is, after all, a multiple karting title winner and a champion in Formula Renault Eurocup and Formula Renault Alps, Formula 2 and Formula E.
He’s got pedigree; it’s just that the paddock has decided most of those years in which he won titles didn’t feature particularly strong fields. Runner-up in his F2 title-winning season was Latifi, and both were in their third campaigns that year, for example.
But the pressure of suddenly stepping to F1 and scoring points is no small deal, and with Williams and Alpine are both mulling him as an option, he’s done his future a terrific service with an assured debut drive.
