Race start, Imola, 2022

Rate the race: 2022 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix

2022 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by

What did you think of today’s race? Share your verdict on the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.

RaceFans has held polls on every F1 race since 2008 to find out which fans thought of each round of the season.

Join in the latest poll and give your verdict on the race: 10 being the highest and 1 the lowest. Please vote based on how entertaining and exciting you thought the race was, not on how your preferred driver or team performed.

What were the best and worst moments of the race? What was the main thing you’ll remember about it? Rate the race out of ten and leave a comment below:

Rate the 2022 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix out of 10

  • 10 (2%)
  • 9 (5%)
  • 8 (18%)
  • 7 (23%)
  • 6 (17%)
  • 5 (16%)
  • 4 (7%)
  • 3 (8%)
  • 2 (4%)
  • 1 (2%)

Total Voters: 211

Loading ... Loading ...

1 = ‘Terrible’, 10 = ‘Perfect’

A RaceFans account is required to vote. You can register an account here or read more about registering here. When this poll is closed the result will be displayed instead of the voting form.

View more Rate the Race results:

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

71 comments on “Rate the race: 2022 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix”

  1. 5. The first 10 and the last laps were interesting but the middle of race was boring. Poor Ferrari…

  2. BLS (@brightlampshade)
    24th April 2022, 15:38

    That was the worst race I’ve watched for some time.

    1. My thoughts also.

      1. Yea it was boring boring boring. Nothing but a procession

        1. Tommytintop (@)
          24th April 2022, 21:28

          +1 Very boring race. Even Lando coming 3rd wasn’t enough to lift my spirits.

          1. Agree, this track and Melbourne 2 weeks ago it’s so hard to overtake (even already revised track Melbourne), so McLaren really Lucky to get the podium.. and yes.. Daniel tyres is not even work in Imola…

  3. Decent battles, but a bit boring middle portion. The worst 2022 race so far.

    1. Wow, really? For me this was rather towards the top end of races so far this year!

  4. Terrible track for racing, processional and not even nice scenery. I rated a over generous 5.

    1. WUT?!?! Imola has one of the best sceneries out there in F1. And it’s one of the best tracks as well..

  5. I hope F1 does not come back here.

  6. 3
    Never expected a decent race here, and it delivered exactly what was expected.

  7. 8. Thrilling start and a good end but dragged a bit in the middle. Nice to see some good defending as well as overtaking. The switch to slicks was tense even if it turned out not to have more rain.

    1. I mean it was the least interesting race of the season. The inters part was great, from dry it was a typical Imola race, pretty dull.

    2. Totally agree, I was shocked with the response here so I have a 9 to compensate.
      How can people on one hand complain about drs and inflation of overtaking and in the other hand complain about this race?

    3. I am with both of you there @verstappen, @glynh. I am incredibly surprised that people are feeling it was boring etc when we had tight battles on track all over the field for most of the race!

  8. I loved the part where there was no DRS. Stroll on Tsunoda was great for instance

    1. I felt similarly and it went on to prove that DRS doesn’t really improve the racing, which was further clarified by some of the battles that were occurring throughout the race.

    2. Definitely. No matter how much David Croft tries to gaslight an entire audience that DRS is absolutely necessary, the race was much more interesting without DRS.

    3. Agreed, liked to see the drivers trying different things and some succeeding. Made the eventual passes that much more interesting. Still, a drying track is always going to lead to a lot of single file driving and when that takes place on a track that’s been notoriously bad for overtaking with F1 cars for at least 20+ years, it was never going to be a particularly eventful race as far as overtakes are concerned.

      A somewhat generous 6/10 rating for me. Pérez was never going to challenge Verstappen, a mixture of understanding his role in the team and just a lack of pace. Ferrari just didn’t have the pace for the win here. Shame Ferrari and Leclerc were unable to settle for third. You win championship by minimizing the bad weekends, not by throwing away good solid points for P3.

  9. Solid race. George made the most of the tricky conditions and his overtake at the chicane was nuts! Great to see some genuine defensive driving in this race. There were few slam dunk passes which was refreshing. A shame to see Ferrari fall apart. Good for the championship though! Great to see Lando on the podium. Just quietly got the job done.

  10. I actually enjoyed this race. Seeing drivers having to push for overtakes and having overtaking being more precious made it more of a classic-style race, although I understand in this current era of constant stimulation and terrible attention spans why this is considered dull.

    1. The lack of DRS was the only good thing of this race.

      1. The lack of DRS made this not a race.

        1. petebaldwin (@)
          24th April 2022, 15:48

          They had DRS and couldn’t pass with it. Most passes too place when DRS was not enabled….

          1. Yeah, while it was still wet.

          2. Ive checked again: before DRS was enabled, aside of LEC/PER, only MAG and NOR were overtaken – clearly slower cars.. Everything else happened after DRS was enabled.

  11. I really enjoyed it. Got to admit I’m usually in favour of DRS but the race was better without it, really. It was nice to watch them actually fight for position rather than blow by really easily.

    1. I hope you enjoyed the passes.

    2. @rocketpanda I agree. Cars were able to race closely. Anyone that was significantly faster was able to make passes and those that were similarly matched scraped most of the race. I don’t need passes to make it a good race, the constant pressure trying to force others into a mistake was enough. I love the circuit and pleased to see how the new cars raced with and without DRS.

  12. Partly wet track but no rain = procession. DRS not enabled first half of the race. No tyre strats. And easy cruising win with a dominant RBR. Lame race.

    1. No tyre strategy definitely made a difference. No DRS made no difference apart from enjoying a few old school overtakes

  13. Whoever complianed about DRS yesterday had their answer today. Without DRS nobody can pass or even approach the car in front.

    1. On a wet track, where there is only one line to use. On a dry track it would have been different.

    2. petebaldwin (@)
      24th April 2022, 15:46

      They had DRS and couldn’t pass… There was more passing when they didn’t have DRS.

      Unfortunately, these cars are still not great for racing. Once you lose some mechanical grip (as we saw at the start), they can race brilliantly.

      1. Passes without DRS were from much slower cars.
        If this is the kind of race people (who dont like DRS) want, good luck, it will be processional until the audience vanishes.

      2. That’s the point. These cars and their technical regs are still based around being ‘redeemed’ by DRS. Its a crutch just so the cars can be fast enough to satisfy those who get their satisfaction from shiny fast things, and not from quality car racing.
        Albon, Gasly and Hamilton did nothing for 45 laps, both with and without DRS….

    3. For youngsters who saw some real overtakes today for the first time, it’s still very important to get the result easy, so they want 10 000 DRS press-X-to-win passes like it’s a game. People have to work hard to get the result, however.
      Hamilton, for one, had a great scrap there with Gasly, and I enjoyed it.

      1. Which real overtakes are you referring to?
        The only overtakes were from much faster car over much slower cars.
        Once the cars had barely 0.5 delta nothing happened.

        1. Dutchguy (@justarandomdutchguy)
          24th April 2022, 16:48

          He probably meant Bottas and Russell passing Magnussen, which were honestly pretty decent, but it’s difficult to make out from his demented rambling

    4. I saw quite a bit of overtaking without DRS today including in places outside the DRS zone because the lack of DRS made drivers have to think about trying something different.

      The race without DRS today is exactly the sort of racing I prefer to watch. Good battling thats more about car positioning & drivers having to think, Where drivers go for overtaking outside of the usual DRS zone & where it’s about the slipstream pulling cars alongside to give us some wheel to wheel racing that makes overtaking about driver skill on the brakes & where defending is possible.

      I don’t want to see overtaking come down to 1 second gaps, Detecting points, activation lines & drivers pushing buttons to open wings to get such a massive overspeed that the overtake is rendered too easy or where it just makes defending less possible.

      1. @stefmeister That’s why I gave it a 7, the overtaking was more the real thing, even if the overall race wasn’t enthralling (no real fight for the podium places).

      2. @stefmeister completely agree. I prefer a slow burning battle. The only disappointment today was the lack of any challenge for the lead, but some great passes or attempts today in places that you wouldn’t expect.

    5. @Gusmaia
      I figured we would see comments like yours. When the sprint race is actually decent, we’ll read praising comments. When cars don’t overtake, we’ll get the ‘we need DRS’ comments… While everybody is entitled to their opinion, for me it’s just to easy to make such conclusions.

      For the sprint race, why exactly was is decent? Because cars out of position due to wet conditions during quali and a bad starting pole sitter. That those facts have nothing to do with the sprint format is what people forget (importantly: the sprint format did nothing to invoke these factors). Actually, because the grid got set during the sprint race, it actually took some spice out of the feature race. The sunday race is more boring because of it. (… leading to more moaning that we need more sprint races because they’re more exciting)

      Why was there little overtaking today? That’s due to the drying track. Try to outbreak someone on the damp bits… There is too much focus on passing. For me, today was fine. I was happy the dry/damp line prevented the DRS passes of yesterday. The best bit was actually when most of the track was still wet and DRS was off. It showed a different side to racing, namely: defending. It instantly made all the passes that did succeed more valuable too.

      1. I understand your point.
        I’d just note that I commented on the post about the Sprint Race that, together with cars out of place, DRS was a significant element to a almost entertaining sprint.

        1. I’d argue DRS made the sprint race significantly worse as it made passing too easy.

          Imagine Sainz having to actually work his way past cars and giving us some nice overtaking on his way through like Alonso & Kimi at Suzuka in 2005. Would have been so much better than the boringly easy push of a button passing we got.

          That is the issue with DRS. Its quantity over quality & nobody will remember any of the highway passing while the great non DRS battles and exciting overtakes will be remembered for decades.

  14. petebaldwin (@)
    24th April 2022, 15:44

    The first half of the race was the best racing I’ve seen in F1 for quite a while. The 2nd half became a bit processional but I’d take that over a 1000 DRS passes. It’s a shame Leclerc had a poor start as it’s have been good to see him and Max fighting.

    Gets a 7 from me.

  15. Horrible race, terrible management.

  16. I quite liked it actually, was good to see some of the drivers slowly reeling in the cars in front of them. And I thought the Hamilton-Gasly contest was quite fun to follow, seeing all the different things Lewis was trying to get in front, and the different ways Gasly was defending.

  17. Pretty processional race overall, no difference between DRS and no DRS.

    Really felt for Sainz. Ferrari kinda psyched themselves out in this one.

  18. 6 from me with the only caveat the Director who insisting to show to us LH at 14th place who was unable to do a single pass the whole race.

    1. The same reta… director opting to switch to Sainz when Leclerc threw the car away.

  19. I wonder if the TV directors know which drivers are the ones to watch for any given season. The Mercs are not favourites of anything, so Lewis being 14th is as interesting as any other midfielder being stuck in traffic out of the points…

    They should know that’s not a story anymore.

    1. True. But the long close fight was interesting and pretty sure that’s what kept them interested. Otherwise, haven’t seen a Mercedes in the Sprint Race.

    2. @fer-no65 someone should tell Nico Rosberg that we don’t care either. He’s getting far too tedious with his Hamilton obsession

  20. I try to forget about this race, it’s always so dull. Sadly the only race here I can’t forget is the one I’d really like to. It doesn’t need to be on the calendar.

  21. 8 for me. One extra point for no DRS for most of the race. Close racing without DRS and exciting to see it is really difficult to overtake but still possible. Sorry for ferrari but good forbthe championship

    1. Do you enjoy watching the grass grow as well?

  22. Pretty dismal, and even more so for a race with changeable conditions. Hoped the 2022 cars might have made Imola a little less poor for racing, but seemingly not. So just a standard Imola-being-Imola race…the narrow non-straight-straight made it too easy for the defending car to cover off an attack, and the corner sequence that follows limited the opportunity for a cut-back and attack following a better exit.

    (I love ‘set up’ attacks, where the prep work starts several corners before, but that doesn’t work at Imola as it’s so narrow and single-file…)

    I don’t mind no overtaking, but I do mind watching two/three/four cars drive around near each other knowing there’s no real possibility of them getting into anything approaching a wheel-to-wheel position and having a proper fight. The Russell-Magnussen-late-arriving-Bottas battle was good and exciting because there was always the feeling that some actual racing could occur, but even that was largely because one of the cars was so much slower than the others. But especially after the track dried, most of the ‘racing’ was just a procession or (eg, Leclerc post-error) a far faster car blasting past another one.

    Says much when the most ‘exciting’ thing happening for about 20 laps was that dull Albon-Gasly-Hamilton ‘fight’ for 12th.

    But I suppose the one positive was how nice it was to see an unforgiving race track. Funny how they make far fewer mistakes and run-wides when there’s a real consequence to doing so…

  23. 7.

    It was an OK race in my view, had everything for everybody: wet conditions, dry conditions, DRS disabled, DRS enabled, enough close battles etc.

    Incredible GP Weekend for RBR, they bagged almost everything available on the table, the only missed ”opportunity” was PER not getting P2 in the Sprint Race. The plus was that Ferrari had GP Weekend to forget and lost many points, then even better for RBR considering there was a Sprint Race on a track where they had the car to beat, therefore even more points for them to grab than usual.

    Starting to think really that the RBR is the car to beat if we don’t consider the tech failures, just the pure pace. Also, their lower downforce concept seems to work better too, most chances and easiest way to overtake is on the straight(s), and here’s where they actually do their overtakes over Ferrari when the cars are performing pretty much equally.

    So far RBR has the better pair of drivers too, no doubt about it. Too many mistakes for SAI, also bad luck. They don’t seem to have Mercedes’ luck: multiple times when HAM had a bad weekend, there was BOT to stop the Ferraris from taking max points. Not the case with SAI/Ferrari, at the moment he’s of no help. Most likely Ferrari made a mistake signing him for another 2 years, I think K-Mag would have been a possible better option. It’s kinda weird that with all the praise Ferrari gets for the stability and driverability of their car, their drivers made more mistakes. Maybe it’s not that stable after all. Just hope their development work for the car will be a positive one and keep the title chances alive until last race.

  24. Was so nice seeing some real racing without the DRS gimmick.

    Some great fighting, some really nice overtaking attempts including outside of the gimmick pass zone & of course some fantastic exciting real overtaking.

    Enabling the gimmick wing just made passing way too easy later on with Tsunoda & Leclerc just easily breezing by cars they came up against, The typically boring push of a button highway pass that has ruined many a race the past decade.

    Please FIA turn it off more often :)

  25. Before DRS was enabled, the race was a 10, after DRS it was a 4, so on average the race was a 7.
    If only they got rid of DRS, this rule change would be spot on for close racing.

  26. I gave it 9 because I like wet races, but maybe it was too generous, 8 would’ve made more sense, which is still one of the most voted options on the poll, finally a red bull 1-2 after 5,5 years, would’ve already happened in baku 2021 if not for bad luck and again in mexico 2018, and how odd, in all 3 cases we had someone chase at close distance the 2nd red bull car: in mexico vettel on ricciardo, with verstappen having like 15 sec gap, in baku hamilton on perez with verstappen having another small gap and here leclerc on perez, in all 3 cases the 2nd red bull car looked likely to make it, although leclerc had caught up very fast, so I wouldn’t be 100% on it in this case. Obviously liked the few battles in the top positions, especially earlier on, without DRS, also some further back, such as bottas and russell on magnussen and then russell defending from bottas towards the end, also hamilton vs gasly vs albon was interesting to see but I found it odd hamilton never tried any different move.

    I think the race could’ve been more interesting if rain had come back earlier than at the last half lap.

    1. You gave it a 9 and then go on to say the race could have been more interesting if rain had come back? So after rating a 9 you still wanted more exciting racing?
      Are you sure you didn’t just give it a 9 because your favourite team Redbull finally got a double podium?
      Hmmm

  27. 8/10 for me. I can only think that most of the negative comments must be coming from people who are not old enough to remember F1 before DRS arrived. Or not much before. It was a lot more about drivers working hard to get in the right position to make a move.

    I quite enjoyed it. I only saw the highlights on C4 so maybe these made it seem more interesting than it was. But there seemed to be quite a bit of action up and down the field and surprise, surprise passes without DRS.

    It was good in some ways to see cars racing close and not necessarily being able to pass at the push of a button. It builds tension and demands more skill from the drivers to get into the perfect position. I can see that some might have found this frustrating though and there were clearly some cars who were faster but could just not get past.

    Imola is an interesting circuit in a nice setting. It would be better though if it was a bit wider in places and there was more than one real passing opportunity.

    1. I can only think that most of the negative comments must be coming from people who are not old enough to remember F1 before DRS arrived. Or not much before.

      Or a long time before, but from people who want F1 to be more interesting and exciting to them, @phil-f1-21.

      It’s quite sad that so many people think that age and viewing time determines what they want, and that people who don’t want the same must be new or young or have a short attention span or whatever.

      F1 has required better technical regs to improve the racing for many decades. But many people seem quite happy just watching ugly, pointless prototype cars going round and round without ever actually racing each other.

      And yeah, maybe reserve your judgement until you’ve seen the full thing. Cutting out the most boring and monotonous bits does tend to make things seem more interesting.

  28. So glad to see so many comments complimenting the lack of DRS. It was awesome to see some unusual overtakes and even attempts at overtakes. Thinking of Bot vs Mag and Str vs Mag. So, so much better than the typical wait for the straight, press the button, sail by. Great to see drivers actually willing to defend their position and tactically placing their cars.

  29. For me, an interesting race (given the circuit) marred by commentators moaning about DRS not being on and going on about DRS trains when DRS wasn’t on.

    Great to see drivers having to harry those in front to try and overtake. Close running bodes well for other circuits – I just hope those in charge are brave enough to at least try some races without DRS.

  30. Pretty surprised by the large number of low grades. Of course this race was not a xlassic, especially because of the mediocre strart from Leclerc which robbed us of any chance of a fight for the lead. But quite some nice fights down in the field, tension for second place (almost) to the end and a circuit that punishes the drivers that make a mistake! I’ve seen a lot of far worse races then this one.

  31. It’s not looking like last year, is it?

Comments are closed.