All info you like to see before the 2022 Emilia Romagna GP starts
The fourth weekend of the 2022 Formula 1 season will also bring us the fourth Sprint weekend of the last two seasons, and the first of the current campaign. The 2022 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix will include the Sprint on Saturday, with the positions for that event being set on Friday’s Qualifying session.
As it should have always been, Friday’s Qualifying will reward ‘Pole Position’ for the fastest driver of that session, instead of it being awarded to the winner of Saturday’s Sprint race (who will start first on Sunday).
Another change to the Sprint format comes in terms of the points awarded, as now the top eight drivers will score on Saturday, instead of only the top three. The winner of the Sprint will score eight points, and it will go down to one point for eighth place.
The other two Sprint weekends of 2022 will be celebrated at Austria and Sao Paulo later in the year.
Ferrari expected to dominate again?
The Scuderia Ferrari has won two of the first three races in 2022 with World Drivers’ Championship leader Charles Leclerc and is coming off a dominant weekend at Melbourne. For the first home race of the year, Ferrari arrives with a tremendous level and looks like the favourite to take home maximum points.
Of course, it will not be easy given the format change provided by the Sprint weekend, as teams will only have one practice session before Qualifying, which could always be tricky in terms of finding the right setup for the rest of the Grand Prix weekend.
Carlos Sainz needs to recover from a tough weekend that included mistakes and misfortunes for him in Australia, and he could definitely bounce back and take advantage of more points being available this upcoming weekend.
What performance will Red Bull and Mercedes have?
Red Bull (Sergio Pérez and Max Verstappen) needs to fight back against the Italian brand in order to get right into the mix of a possible battle for both the WDC and World Constructors’ Championship.
The team has had three retirements due to mechanical issues in the first three races, all related to fuel issues. Verstappen retired from two races, at Bahrain and Australia, while Pérez had also retired from the season-opening Bahrain round.
The team looked close to Ferrari, perhaps even ahead, in the first two rounds, but the race at Albert Park showed a dominant F1-75 and Leclerc won comfortably.
Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes W13 and Sergio Perez driving the Red Bull RB18 at Albert Park in Melbourne
Moreover, Mercedes (George Russell and Lewis Hamilton) has underperformed to start 2022, but has overachieved, with a couple of podiums, 65 points as a team (second-most) and Russell currently placed second in the World Drivers’ Championship standings.
For the Imola weekend, many expected Mercedes to bring big updates given the arrival of the European rounds. However, there is no certainty that the team will do so and many within the squad expect a challenging weekend.
Mercedes desperately needs to catch Ferrari and Red Bull or get a lot closer than it’s been so far. Will we see that at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari? It could be interesting during a Sprint weekend.
Behind the Top 3 teams, Alpine emerged as a big contender at Australia, until a mechanical issue hindered what looked like an easy Top 5 (or even Top 3) for Fernando Alonso at Melbourne. Moreover, Esteban Ocon is currently ‘the best of the rest’ in the WDC with 20 points, sitting in seventh place behind the six drivers from the Top 3 squads.
McLaren (Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo) is also looking well after a challenging start to the season in the first couple of events. Behind the Top 3 teams (Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull) and Alpine, these teams follow in the WCC:
Alfa Romeo (Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou), Haas (Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher), AlphaTauri (Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda), Williams (Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi) and Aston Martin (Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel).
2022 Emilia Romagna GP Facts & Figures
The race will be the third Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, and the official name is Formula 1 Rolex Gran Premio Del Made In Italy E Dell'emilia Romagna 2022.
The race title is the fifth different given to a GP in Italy, after the Italian, Pescara, San Marino, and Tuscan Grands Prix. Italy ranks second among countries with the most different GP titles (the US held six GPs with different names so far).
In terms of races held in the same country, it will be the 103rd race in Italy (72 Italian GPs, 26 San Marino GPs, the 1957 Pescara GP, the 2020 Tuscan Grand Prix, and the previous two editions of the Emilia Romagna GP). No other country has celebrated more than 79 races.
Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari Track info
The Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, near Imola, will host a Formula 1 Grand Prix for the 30th time, and the third since 2006.
The track is named after Ferrari’s founder, Enzo Ferrari, and his first son, Alfredo “Alfredino” Ferrari, who died in 1956 at 24 years of age.
The anti-clockwise track at Imola is a 4.909 km circuit with 19 corners. The course is different from the traditional layout used at Imola, as the final chicane of the past does not exist anymore and there is just a straight uniting the Rivazza corners and the Variante Tamburello.
The 29 races previously held at Imola were the 1980 Italian Grand Prix, 26 San Marino Grands Prix between 1981 and 2006, and the 2020 and 2021 Emilia Romagna Grands Prix.
The driver with the most wins at Imola is Michael Schumacher with seven wins (one with Benetton and six with Ferrari).
The most remembered race at Imola is the tragic 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, in which Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger and three-time champion Ayrton Senna lost their lives after accidents.
That race caused changes in the track (the Tamburello corner was flat-out at the time) and also produced many changes regarding the safety of everyone involved in a Formula 1 event.
The last two races at Imola before falling out of the calendar in 2006 were great, both with battles between Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher. Alonso won for Renault ahead of Schumacher in 2005, while Schumacher returned the favor in 2006.
Last season, Max Verstappen won for Red Bull in a race that saw cars fitted with the intermediate tyres for a wet track early on. Lewis Hamilton followed the Dutchman after getting the chance to recover from an off-track excursion earlier in the event due to a red flag.
Lando Norris finished third for McLaren in 2021.
The current lap record in a Grand Prix comes from the 2020 race at Imola, set by Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes W11 with a 1:15.484 min lap.
2022 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix - Tyres
The dry tyres for the 2022 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix will be the C2 as P Zero White hard, C3 as P Zero Yellow Medium, and C4 as P Zero Red soft.
Pirelli explained their choice with a statement in a press release: “The tyres are all-new but the Imola track is just as it was at this time last year, with a narrow, old-school feel. The asphalt dates from 2011, which makes the 11-year old surface reasonably abrasive.
That’s why we don’t see the same double step between medium and soft as we had in Australia a couple of weeks ago: the more mature surface at Imola generates more grip and therefore more heat in the tyres, requiring a more robust softest compound.
The forces at work on the tyres are generally equal between lateral and longitudinal, making it a flowing track where drivers need to find a good rhythm. It’s particularly important to get good traction out of the final Rivazza corner in order to have a strong run down the start-finish straight before a heavy braking area into the first corner: a key overtaking opportunity.
Imola marks the first sprint session of the year, with rules that are slightly revised compared to last year, including more points on offer. From 2022, pole position will be recorded as the driver who goes fastest in Friday’s qualifying session – and this driver will be the recipient of the Pirelli Pole Position Award. The tyre rules are the same as last year’s sprint events though.
Rather than having 13 sets of tyres for a conventional weekend, there will be just 12 sets. These consist of two sets of P Zero White hard, four sets of P Zero Yellow medium, and six sets of P Zero Red soft. In addition, the teams will have up to six sets of Cinturato Green intermediates and three sets of Cinturato Blue full wets available in case of wet weather. ”
The minimum starting pressures will be 24.5 psi (front) and 21.5 psi (rear).
2022 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix - Weather Forecast
Friday, Apr 22nd - FP1 & Qualifying
Conditions: Mostly cloudy with showers
Max. temperature: 14°C
Chance of rain: 70%
Saturday, Apr 23rd - FP2 & Sprint
Conditions: Partly sunny
Max. temperature: 22°C
Chance of rain: 6%
Sunday, Apr 24th - Race
Conditions: Partly sunny with a couple of showers
Max. temperature: 19°C
Chance of rain: 60%
Who will be on the 2022 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix podium?
Weather predictions differ so far, with some suggesting a dry Sunday and others giving some chance of rain. Clearly, things could be quite different as the weather changes, but it could be interesting either way, given the format of the Sprint weekend. The challenges the Sprint weekend brings on the setup of the cars and the risks of being out of position due to a bad Saturday could be crucial for the event.
Sir Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, 2nd position, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 1st position, the Red Bull trophy delegate and Lando Norris, McLaren, 3rd position, on the podium during the Emilia Romagna GP at Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari on Sunday April 18, 2021 (Photo by Steven Tee / LAT Images)
Ferrari could be in front of its best chance to win a home race since the 2019 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, which was also won by Charles Leclerc, who now has four wins in his career, after winning the Bahrain and Australia rounds.
Carlos Sainz will look to improve his current situation, as his retirement from the last race wasn’t pretty. He started the year with a couple of podiums and will need to regain confidence and continue to put up solid drives throughout the weekend.
On the other hand, Mercedes could be again looking to preserve its place behind Ferrari and Red Bull rather than joining that fight at the front. In the last two races, the team has finished with both cars behind Alpine or McLaren cars, and it could be crucial to stopping such a streak.
The prediction for the top three of the 2022 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix is 1. Charles Leclerc, 2. Max Verstappen, 3. Lewis Hamilton.
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