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Max Verstappen extended his Formula 1 winning streak to five races following an anticlimactic end to the 2022 Italian Grand Prix.
It brings to an end the European leg of the season and makes a Verstappen title coronation at the next race a mathematical possibility for the first time this year. But Verstappen wasn’t the only driver to win big at Monza.
Our writers pick out their winners and losers from the Italian GP:
Winners
Max Verstappen
There’s just no stopping Verstappen at the moment as he marches towards a second F1 world championship.
Though the ominous stat that Verstappen was yet to stand on the podium at Monza was trotted out regularly throughout the weekend, that streak never looked likely to be extended once he’d negotiated the start and breezed into the top three by the beginning of lap two.
And though there’s no way of predicting what would have happened had a one-lap dash been possible before the finish, the ease with which Verstappen dismissed Charles Leclerc’s pace in the middle of the race and then managed the gap to the Ferrari once the team swapped Leclerc onto softs says on pace at least he would have had the win comfortably covered.
That’s five in a row. Right now nobody looks like standing in Verstappen’s way. – Jack Cozens
Carlos Sainz
It’s hard to say how his pace and performance stacked up to Leclerc’s, but Sainz certainly got more opportunities to show himself off – by first picking off Sergio Perez and then absolutely carving through midfield car after midfield car with remarkable ease despite all of them having DRS.
It was a lonely race from there on, but it would’ve probably been unreasonable to ask for much more. – Valentin Khorounzhiy
Nyck de Vries
Take your pick for what should qualify de Vries for this list: points on his debut, the huge boost it must give his 2023 F1 prospects, or just the fact it was an outright classy drive.
There were a lot of potential pitfalls for de Vries in his first F1 race. Even getting the start right was tricky given he had such limited procedural practice, having stepped into the car for FP3.
That, the fact he had done no high-fuel running, the pitstop – all little threats of jeopardy that could have caused his grand prix to unravel.
That’s before you even get into the details of actually competing in an F1 race!
But de Vries handled all of it superbly. He earned that points finish. And he’s made the strongest case possible that Williams should sign him for 2023.
Not a bad return for someone that was probably expecting to do FP1 and a bit of TV work this weekend and nothing more. – Scott Mitchell-Malm
Zhou Guanyu
Although he wasn’t able to pass de Vries for ninth, Zhou Guanyu was still able to end Alfa Romeo’s painful six-race streak without a point.
With Valtteri Bottas compromised by a grid penalty, Zhou confidently led Alfa’s charge in the grand prix, a solid drive that will inch him even closer to a seemingly inevitable second season with the team next year. – Josh Suttill
Losers
Ferrari’s strategists
The fact Leclerc made absolutely zero inroads towards Verstappen in that final stints suggests this was a race Ferrari was always going to lose, regardless of strategy.
That might or might not be true, for it’s really hard to say whether Verstappen would’ve been able to create an overtaking opportunity on Leclerc had they stayed on the same strategy, but the early VSC created a tipping point for strategic diversion.
Had Leclerc not been called in under VSC, Red Bull would’ve brought in Verstappen – he confirmed after the race that his instruction was “opposite to Leclerc”.
The stop would’ve been costlier for the Dutchman, as the VSC period ended with Leclerc heading for pit exit, which in Verstappen’s case would’ve been even earlier in his pit phase. But that probably would’ve still been enough for an undercut – and the Red Bull clearly looked mighty in clean air.
Leclerc insisted afterwards this was no clear error, even if he didn’t sound entirely sold on the call. Ultimately, he felt Ferrari had been unlucky, which seems fair enough.
But in the wider context of the season, this was another strategic battle that was lost conclusively. – VK
Daniel Ricciardo
Ricciardo should’ve scored points and had done a decent job soaking up pressure as the locomotive of a DRS train before his car called it quits.
But he was also taken apart by Norris in qualifying and then had to watch his team-mate extend his stint with superior pace after Ricciardo’s early stop. And instead of tipping the scales back his way, all Norris’s bad pitstop did was add the ignominy for Ricciardo of having to be rightly asked to move out of the way.
Unlike in 2021, he clearly had no answer for his team-mate this weekend. It’s been that kind of year. – VK
Alpine
Alpine has frequented the winners’ section of these articles for each of the past two race weekends, so perhaps it was due an appearance in the losers’ section this time.
On a more serious note, Alpine simply did not have the pace at Monza that we’ve come to expect of it of late, even if Fernando Alonso did make Q3.
Alonso was left aghast by the car’s energy deployment in the race – speechless save for the word “wow” – and though he looked on course to grab a point or two, a suspected water pressure issue brought his 10-race points-scoring streak to an abrupt end.
Esteban Ocon’s failure to make an impression on full-season rookie Zhou and grand prix debutant de Vries was underwhelming too, given what a strong campaign he’s had in 2022.
The only silver lining was that on one of the rare occasions McLaren had both cars in contention for points, only one of them made the finish. – JC
Nicholas Latifi
Latifi is a thoroughly pleasant presence in F1 and is undeserving of the relentless mockery that seems to follow him online these days, but the only sensible conclusion after this weekend is that his time in F1 has to be up.
The Canadian got outqualified by his debutant team-mate, lost out in the Turn 1 tussle and then never threatened for anything resembling points in what was clearly a points-capable car.
He’s had his moments with Williams. But if the team decided it wants a separation even earlier than 2023, ala what Renault did with Jolyon Palmer in 2017, in order to bed de Vries in, it could not be blamed in the least. – VK
