Emilia Romagna Grand Prix – F1 heads to Italy for the start of the (mostly) European leg of the championship, and the first of three Sprint rounds this year.
Trialled at three venues last season – Silverstone, Monza and Sao Paulo – the powers that be have decided that Sprint Qualifying, now just billed as Sprint, will once again be a feature at three rounds.
The chosen three for this season are this weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, as well as Austria and the final one, as it was last year, will be in Brazil. Aside from the name change, there are a couple more differences between the 2021 Sprint Qualifying and the 2022 Sprint version, namely points and a change in how pole position is recorded.
Whereas in the initial trial year only the top three were awarded points at the end of the 100km sprint race – three for P1, two for P2 and one for P3. Now, the FIA have more on offer with championship points being awarded all the way to P8, with P1 taking eight and P8 with a solitary point.
While the fastest driver in qualifying is said to have taken pole position, the official records only note the driver who starts the race in P1. So the fastest driver in qualifying might have a grid penalty which drops them back a row or more, as happened to Michael Schumacher at the 2012 Monaco Grand Prix, and as a result don’t have that result added to their pole tally. That however will not apply on Sprint weekends this year.
For three weekends this season the driver recorded as having pole position might not be the driver who started the Grand Prix from P1. Whoever ends Friday qualifying in P1 will be recorded in the history books as having pole position for the Grand Prix no matter how the Sprint works out for them or where they will actually be starting the Grand Prix come Sunday.
So that means Friday will decide pole position and the grid line-up for the Sprint, while Saturday will see the Sprint decide the grid line-up for Sunday’s Grand Prix.
Of the three Sprint Qualifying rounds in 2021, it’s only really the last of the bunch that is remembered as it featured a storming drive from Lewis Hamilton who raced from P20 to P5 on Saturday and then, after a grid penalty, from P10 to the win on Sunday.
Lewis Hamilton's charge through the field for #F1Sprint in Brazil was truly something else 🤯
We can't wait to see what the Imola edition of Sprint will bring! 👀#F1 pic.twitter.com/PLbcQDV1Ip
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 19, 2022
The previous two Sprint trial weekends were rather overshadowed by events during the Sunday races, with Hamilton and Max Verstappen causing controversy after clashes and crashes in both the British and Italian Grands Prix.
Heading to Italy this weekend, Charles Leclerc and Ferrari both sit at the top of their respective championships. With Leclerc having not finished lower than P2 so far this year, he has almost twice the points of the second placed driver in the standings, Mercedes’ George Russell, the British driver’s consistency in the season so far, despite the Mercedes car not being as strong as the team had hoped, leaving him a few points ahead of Carlos Sainz in the other Ferrari.
Leclerc’s biggest on-track rival has been Verstappen but with the reigning champion dealing with reliability issues on his Red Bull, the only time the Dutchman has taken the chequered flag this season was for his win in Jeddah. Verstappen sits P6 in the standings, three points behind his rival from last season, Hamilton.
On the team side of things Ferrari are again well out in front of Mercedes, with Red Bull ten points behind the German marque. After a stunning drive from Alexander Albon in Australia, which saw the Thai racer climb from P20 to P7 on a set of hard tyres before having to complete his mandatory pit stop at the end of the penultimate lap and that dropped him back to P10 at the flag. That gave Albon and Williams their first points of the season and means that Aston Martin are the only team without a point to their name heading into round 4.
For this weekend FP1 and Qualifying will run from 12:30pm and 4pm on Friday, FP2 and Sprint on Saturday at 11:30am and 3:30pm, while the race will start at 2pm on Sunday.
