Everything you need to know about the coming 2022 Italian Grand Prix

The 2022 Formula 1 season continues after a strategically interesting race at the Netherlands last week. It is now the turn of the temple of speed at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, with the 2022 Italian Grand Prix coming to us next Sunday.

Who will be quick around the Temple of Speed?

While we had a battle for the win in the Dutch round between home hero Max Verstappen and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, the Monza event has the Dutchman as the clear favourite for the win, with the Red Bull being the quickest car and going to a track that suits the RB18 perfectly.

Ferrari (Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz) could be strong at its home turf as well, with Mercedes (George Russell and Hamilton) could be struggling with the W13. The car has struggled for straight-line speed quite often and, even though the car’s behaviour doesn’t seem to have any patterns, the team could face big difficulties in Italy.

Verstappen continues solid as the World Drivers’ Championship leader with 310 points, followed by Leclerc and Pérez with 201 each (Leclerc’s three wins put him higher than Pérez, who won once this year). Russell is now fourth with 188 points, followed by Sainz with 175 points and Hamilton in sixth with 158.

Behind them, the ‘best of the rest’ is McLaren’s Lando Norris with 82 points, followed by Alpine’s Esteban Ocon (66 points). Ocon’s teammate, Fernando Alonso with 59 points, and Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas (46 points) round out the Top 10 in the WDC. Bottas hasn’t scored in the last six races, but remains in the Top 10.

What are the current 2022 F1 Constructors Championship standings?

Red Bull leads with 511 points in the World Constructors' Championship. Ferrari is second with 376, and Mercedes is third with 346.

Esteban Ocon (FRA) Alpine F1 Team A522. Dutch Grand Prix, Sunday 4th September 2022. Zandvoort, Netherlands.

Alpine is now 24 points ahead of McLaren (Norris and Daniel Ricciardo) for fourth place in the World Constructors’ Championship. The French team has 125 points, while McLaren has 101 as Ricciardo continues struggling (scoreless in 11 of the 15 races so far).

Alfa Romeo (Bottas and Guanyu Zhou) has not scored points in the last six races, but remains sixth in the WCC with 51 points.

Haas (Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher) is seventh in the World Constructors’ Championship with 34 points but failed to score in the last four events.

AlphaTauri (29 points - Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda), Aston Martin (25 points - Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll), and Williams (4 points - Alexander Albon and Nicholas Latifi) round out the WCC positions.

2022 Italian GP Facts & Figures

The 2022 Italian Grand Prix will be the 73rd running of the event under the FIA World Championship of Drivers umbrella. Ferrari is the most successful team with 19 victories in front of their devoted Tifosi.

The race has been part of every season of the World Championship since its inception in 1950 and is a genuinely iconic date in every year’s calendar. This year will be special because Ferrari might have genuine chances of winning the event, which wasn’t the case in Monza's 2020 and 2021 races.

The first winner of the Italian round of the World Championship was Giuseppe ‘Nino’ Farina, who won his home race in 1950 in his Alfetta and also secured his World Championship, which made him F1’s first champion in history and the only one to date to win the title at his home race.

Ferrari’s first success at Monza during the World Championship occurred in 1951, with Alberto Ascari winning the event, something he would replicate during his title-winning campaign in 1952.

Then, Juan Manuel Fangio won three straight races with Maserati and Mercedes between 1953 and 1955, becoming the first to win three Italian GPs on the trot, which has not been replicated yet.

Fangio was crowned champion in the 1956 event, achieving his fourth title and doing so with Ferrari. Jack Brabham, too, sealed one of his titles in Italy in the 1960 event, which was boycotted by the British teams as a protest against the Monza banking.

The race was constantly the defining moment of many World Championships:

Start of the 1972 Italian F1 Grand Prix at Monza

Phil Hill sealed his title in 1961 at Monza and behind the wheel of a Ferrari too. Still, the race was marred by the tragic accident in which Ferrari driver and title contender Wolfgang von Trips lost his life, with 15 spectators killed in one of the saddest days of F1 racing.

Jim Clark also achieved his first title in Italy in 1963, while Brabham earned his third and final championship in 1966. Furthermore, Sir Jackie Stewart closed out his championship quest in 1969 in the Italian round, but the 1970 posthumous World Champion Jochen Rindt lost his life in the Italian event in 1970.

The 1971 event saw the closest finish in the history of the sport between first and second, with Peter Gethin (BRM) beating Ronnie Peterson’s March (Peterson also lost his life as a result of a crash in Italy in 1978) by 0.01 seconds and a little more than six-tenths covered the top five.

In turn, Emerson Fittipaldi celebrated his first World Championship in Italy in 1972 and Stewart did the same with his third and last championship the following year. Another driver who also took the biggest prize in motor racing in Italy while driving for Ferrari was the legendary Niki Lauda in 1975. Then, in 1978, Mario Andretti achieved his main goal for Lotus on the track where his passion for motor racing began as a child watching Alberto Ascari in the 1950s.

Ultimately, Jody Scheckter followed in Lauda’s footsteps in 1979, winning the title at Italy for Ferrari in the last time a driver sealed a championship at the Italian Grand Prix.

The most successful drivers in the Italian Grand Prix are Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton, with five wins each, followed by three-time champion Nelson Piquet with four. Piquet won the only Italian Grand Prix in history not to be held at Monza, as he dominated the 1980 event at Imola.

In the 2020 event, without any spectators, the race was a surprising one, with Frenchman Pierre Gasly becoming a Grand Prix winner after holding off Carlos Sainz’s McLaren in the final laps and taking advantage of a red-flag period and an off weekend by elite teams (Mercedes due to mistakes and Red Bull due to lack of pace).

Daniel Ricciardo gave McLaren its first win since the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix in the 2021 Italian Grand Prix. The Australian led a 1-2 for the Woking-based team, ahead of his teammate Lando Norris.

Ricciardo won the race after starting from P2 and passing Red Bull’s Max Verstappen at the start and showing great pace. He was also helped by Verstappen crashing with Lewis Hamilton later in the race, with the two title challengers retiring from the race. Still, the Australian had a big chance of winning the race even with the Dutchman and the seven-time champion staying on the track, as his pace was solid.

Autodromo Nazionale di Monza Track info

The Temple of Speed will always be known for its long straights and being the most demanding track in terms of power. Though it offers simplistic setup configurations for the track, low-downforce settings for the cars mean they look gorgeously unstable around the 5.793-km track.

Since 1950, the circuit has provided seven different layouts, most keeping the same ‘boomerang’ layout we see now, though some changes have been made to adhere to safety measures.

The first layout had eight corners, but only four of those demanded hard braking. In 1955, the Parabolica was added instead of the two-corner Curva di Vedano, and the oval speed ring was added, bringing in the infamous and intimidating banking.

This layout was scrapped after the 1961 event, in which Wolfgang von Trips and 15 spectators tragically died. Four races were completed in the longer version of the track (1955, 1956, 1960, and 1961).

The shortened track kept the high-speed nature, but safety concerns were huge due to the unbelievably increasing speeds, which enforced two chicanes for the track, one in the middle of the long straight, the Variante del Rettifilo, and the Variante Ascari, added instead of the Curva del Vialone, where Alberto Ascari had died in 1955.

Both the Variante Ascari and the Variante del Rettifilo were changed in 1974 and 1976, respectively, and a chicane was also added to the Variante Della Roggia in 1976. Since 1976, the changes have been minor, with a new profile for the Curva Biassono and the second Lesmo in 1994 and the Variante del Rettifilo being changed from a double chicane to a simpler right-left turn.

The current layout records are the following:

Outright record: 1:18,887 min by Lewis Hamilton in 2020, driving the Mercedes W11 at an average speed of 264.363 km/h (Fastest Lap of all time in terms of average speed).

Fastest Lap during a race: 1:21,046 min by Rubens Barrichello in 2004, driving the Ferrari F2004 at an average speed of 257.321 km/h.

2022 Italian Grand Prix - Tyres

The dry tyres for the 2022 Italian 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 simple statement in a press release and established the guidelines for the particular weekend: “The three compounds in the middle of the range have been chosen for Monza: C2 as the P Zero White hard, C3 as the P Zero Yellow medium, and C4 as the P Zero Red soft.

Eliminating the natural understeer tendency of the current cars is a challenge at the slow corners in Monza, with a strong rear end needed to achieve a perfect balance through the fast sections.
Traction is important to ensure a good drive into the flat-out straights from the slower and more technical parts of the circuit: another well-known characteristic of Monza, with notable kerbs at the chicanes.

The low downforce settings, with a specific low-drag package, mean that the focus is more on mechanical grip from the tyres.”

The minimum starting pressures for the tyres will be 25.5 PSI (front) and 22.5 PSI (rear).

2022 Italian Grand Prix Weather Forecast

Friday, Sep 9th - FP1 & FP2
Conditions: Partly sunny with a thunderstorm in parts of the area
Max. temperature: 25°C
Chance of rain: 42%

Saturday, Sep 10th - FP3 & Qualifying
Conditions: Partly sunny and pleasant
Max. temperature: 26°C
Chance of rain: 3%

Sunday, Sep 11th - Race
Conditions: Partly sunny
Max. temperature: 26°C
Chance of rain: 25%

Who will be on the 2022 Italian Grand Prix Podium?

Monza has given us incredible results and great races in the last four seasons, including Lewis Hamilton’s battle against the Ferraris in the 2018 edition, Charles Leclerc’s big win for Ferrari at home in 2019, Pierre Gasly’s maiden win in 2020 and Daniel Ricciardo storming through for McLaren last year.

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren, 1st position, Lando Norris, McLaren, 2nd position, and Zak Brown, CEO, McLaren Racing, celebrate on the podium with shoeys

McLaren won in 2021 with a 1-2 and finished second in the 2020 race with Carlos Sainz. Can the Woking-based team replicate such a result this year? It would be big for the team in its battle against Alpine for fourth in the WCC.

Alpine, of course, should be strong at Monza, and the team could be looking at increasing its gap over McLaren and possibly, under favorable circumstances, get close to a Top-5 finish or even a podium.

The top should be crowded with the Red Bulls of Verstappen and ‘Checo’, but Ferrari will try to throw everything at the best car of the grid and find some strength within at home. The Scuderia needs a perfect weekend at Monza if a win is on the cards, and the team has failed to do so recently.

Mercedes should struggle at Monza, but we should not count the team out, as they’ve shown in the past that the cars’ weaknesses can be ironed out with work. Still, strategy will need to be on point for them this weekend, which didn’t happen at the last event.

The prediction for the top three of the 2022 Italian Grand Prix is 1. Max Verstappen, 2. Charles Leclerc, 3. Sergio Pérez.

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