F1: Verstappen Coasts To Italian GP Win Behind A Safety Car

The 2022 Italian GP unfolded piece by piece, as the battle for the lead was not over right until the second last lap. Charles Leclerc started the race on pole position, but P2 starter George Russel gave him a run for his money going into turn 1. Leclerc fended off the challenge and went comfortably in the lead. Max Verstappen meanwhile started the race in P7, and made up ground quickly to reach P2 in the opening laps.

Leclerc led the initial stages of the Grand Prix.

Anticipating Verstappen's strong pace, Ferrari decided to go on a two stop strategy, pitting Leclerc to change from Softs to Medium tyres on Lap 12 itself. Verstappen and Russel on the other hand went long on their first tyres, and pitted deep in the race. Later on, Leclerc pitted from the lead of the race for Soft tyres with less than 20 laps to go, and came out about 20 seconds behind Verstappen. The chase was on.

Ferrari elected to go on a two-stop strategy, pitting Leclerc for a set of softs with less than 20 laps to go.

However, Leclerc's pace on the soft tyres was underwhelming, and he could reduce the 20 second gap to only 16 seconds, before his tyre advantage neutralised. But to throw a curveball into the race, Daniel Ricciardo's car stopped in the middle of the two Lesmos from a suspected engine failure, triggering a Safety Car. This meant that the field would be bunched up, and multiple drivers stopped for fresh soft tyres anticipating a chaotic restart.

Daniel Ricciardo had a mechanical failure and had to retire from the race.

But to everyone's disappointment, the restart never happened. Ricciardo's car was presumably not in neutral and needed a tractor to be picked up off the track, elongating the safety car period. Interestingly though, the race control chose not to red flag the session despite the tractor being on the track, which is the usual protocol, and the race ended behind the safety car, with Verstappen bringing home Leclerc and Russel. “We had a great race. We had really good race car and we were controlling the gap and then the Safety Car came out. Unfortunately we didn’t get a restart", Max Verstappen said after the race.

Nyck de Vries impressed on his F1 debut by scoring P9 for Williams.

Following them were their teammates Sainz, Hamilton & Perez, who finished the race in P4-P6 respectively. After a poor start to the race saw him drop many places, Norris finished seventh ahead of Gasly. Substituting for Alex Albon, Nyck de Vries brought home an impressive P9 for Williams in his Formula 1 debut, and the former Formula E champion also received driver of the day, having shown great pace and racecraft despite driving the Williams car only for 30 minutes in FP3, before Qualifying. Zhou wrapped the top 10 with yet another points finish.

2022 Formula 1 Round 16 Italian Grand Prix: Race Results

2022 Formula 1 World Driver's Championship Standings After Round 16 - Italian GP

2022 Formula 1 World Constructor's Championship Standings After Round 16 - Italian GP