F1 2023: Italian Grand Prix qualifying, pole position, Ferrari, Red Bull Racing, Carlos Sainz, Max Verstappen, records, winning streak
A Ferrari on pole in Monza. It might strain the partisans to admit it, but you love to see it.
The Scuderia is F1’s only de facto national team, and Monza is its home turf. Every year it arrives burdened by the expectation of delivering for the crowd. In recent times the team has usually disappointed. But this weekend the hope for success is real.
Carlos Sainz beat Max Verstappen to pole by just 0.013 seconds in the season’s best qualifying hour. His teammate, Charles Leclerc, was only 0.054 seconds further back.
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This trio was operating on another level relative to the rest. George Russell was next best but almost 0.4 seconds adrift. Even Sergio Pérez in the second Red Bull Racing car was no match in fifth.
In a year of hard truths and bitter disappointment, pole and a two-to-one strategic advantage on race day is the brightest ray of light all season for the long-suffering Scuderia.
And though Verstappen has missed pole several times already this year, this is the biggest risk to his and Red Bull Racing’s shot at rewriting history.
No driver has ever won 10 races in a row, and no team has ever won 14 on the bounce — depending on your interpretation of the history book.
Red Bull Racing is also on the march to the first undefeated season in Formula 1 history, a feat that suddenly seemed eminently achievable when it got to the mid-season break without a glove having been laid on it.
Yet enter Monza, enter Ferrari, and suddenly the form book has flipped.
Some 35 years after McLaren lost its undefeated streak to a shock Ferrari one-two in Monza, is the Scuderia about to do it again?
HOW FERRARI CAN WIN
Ferrari’s hopes for victory rest on the same advantages that brought it pole position: straight-line speed.
It’s clear visually that this has been Ferrari’s approach all weekend. While most other teams spent practice sampling different wing levels, Ferrari was straight out with the skinniest rear wing it had, turning the red car into a rocket ship down the straights. Because Monza boasts the fewest corners of any circuit on the calendar, the drivers have been able to accommodate the car’s relative weaknesses when not on the throttle.
It helps too, though, that the SF-23 has been reasonably competitive in the sorts of slow chicanes that dominate the Monza layout. There are only three medium and high-speed corners to speak of: the two Lesmo curves and Parabolica.
Combine all that with Ferrari giving both its drivers brand-new power units for this race, the last of their pool, and it’s evident the team has perfectly judged its approach to the weekend, at least in the battle for pole.
The telemetry from Sainz’s pole lap is instructive.
Already by the time he and Verstappen get to the first turn he’s travelling more than 7 kilometres per hour faster. The Spaniard’s top speed advantage averaged 6 kilometres per hour over the lap, and 75 per cent of Monza is spent with the throttle wide open.
As the lap goes on, Verstappen becomes increasingly more competitive through the chicanes, but the Ferrari’s lower drag always pulls it clear. By the time they hit around 280 kilometres per hour — which happens four times around the lap: three times into the chicanes and once into Parabolica — the Ferrari becomes unreachable.
The chicanes are the key passing opportunities. An overall slower car just has to be quicker in a straight line to neutralise anything but the most audacious of passing attempts — think about Daniel Ricciardo’s defence in his 2021 McLaren ahead of Verstappen in the title-contending Red Bull Racing car.
That logic has played out 15 times since the 2000 Italian Grand Prix, meaning the circuit has a modern pole-to-win rate of 65 per cent, which is higher than Monte Carlo.
That all sounds great for the home team.
But Ferrari has another advantage in its battle for victory: both Sainz and Leclerc are operating on a similar level at the front. Verstappen’s teammate will start fifth, and if he’s as far off the lead pace in the race as he was in qualifying, he’ll be of limited strategic use.
It means the Scuderia can start the race knowing it can run two alternative strategies to try to interfere with Verstappen’s preferred race. It may not even necessarily be about Sainz getting to the flag; Ferrari will take a win with either driver, no matter how messy the strategy.
Finally, there’s the superstition of the so-called Monza curse. A relatively new bit of F1 lore, it reads as follows: Leclerc won in 2019 and retired in 2020, Pierre Gasly won in 2020 and retired in 2021, Ricciardo won in 2021 and retired in 2022.
Verstappen won the race in 2022. You can bet a bunch of Ferrari fans are waking up on Sunday suddenly feeling superstitious.
HOW VERSTAPPEN CAN WIN
All that said, you’d be brave to bet against Verstappen in such formidable form. Certainly the Dutchman seemed nonplussed after qualifying not to have nabbed pole position, hinting that he’s more than confident about his car’s superior race pace.
And while Ferrari got pole, the superfine margin hints at the truth of the matter that the RB19 is theoretically faster over a single lap in the right conditions.
As we’ve seen all season, the Red Bull Racing car is slow to warm up its front tyres, a characteristic that pays massive race-day dividends but that hampers it in qualifying.
The first two series of corners in Monza are short, sharp chicanes. It’s Verstappen’s cold tyres rather than anything intrinsic to his car that opens the gap to Sainz.
Again the telemetry proves instructive. By the time the two cars get to the Ascari chicane, around two-thirds of the way around the lap, the Ferrari’s car advantage has completely disappeared, and momentum starts swinging back towards Verstappen.
Parabolica is an even stronger example. Having been closely matched through the fast-ish Lesmo curves, Verstappen blows Sainz away at the final corner. He’s 18 kilometres per hour quicker on entry and 10 kilometres per hour faster at the apex.
He entered the last corner almost 0.15 seconds down but makes up all but 0.013 seconds of that to the line. If this lap were repeated in race conditions, he’d have a reasonable chance of passing Sainz into the first chicane — especially if he had the benefit of DRS.
Then there’s also Verstappen’s better tyre usage. Not only is that advantageous in and of itself — he’s estimated to have around a 0.1-second margin on race pace — but it’ll likely play even better against Ferrari’s weakness keeping the Pirelli tyres alive.
Just think back to last season’s race, which took place in remarkably similar circumstances.
In 2022 Leclerc took pole — and by an even larger margin, 0.145 seconds — but just lost control of front tyre wear owing to his super-low-drag set-up. It forced him into a two-stop strategy that was never really likely to pay off but at least kept him in the fight rather than having his pace fade badly.
This year the race is again likely to be a one-stop affair, with the medium and hard tyres favoured.
Having two cars up front won’t count for much if tyre wear is out of control. And in that case an early stop onto the super-durable hard tyre won’t work, with Pérez likely to be within pit-stop range for the first half of the race, even if he ends up stuck behind George Russell.
And Pérez might still prove influential if he can just break past Russell. It takes around 25 seconds to make a pit stop. So long as he’s within that distance of the leaders by half distance — that is, so long as he’s not a second a lap slower — he’ll be able to interfere with Ferrari’s strategy more comprehensively than by just getting in the way.
But even before all that might come into play, Verstappen is starting from a prime bit of land on the front row of the grid. Second place is on the inside line, which means he needs to be only side by side with Sainz off the line to have a reasonable chance of a block pass into the chicane to take the lead. Ricciardo did exactly that to him in 2021, and the McLaren proved unpassable in the first stint.
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
The 2023 Italian Grand Prix is live and ad-break free during racing on Kayo and Fox Sports.
Pre-race coverage starts tonight at 9:30pm, with lights out at 11:00pm.
