‘We’ll make their life complicated’: Sainz knows pole presents slim chance to win

Given how utterly unstoppable Red Bull and Max Verstappen have been since 2022, how dominant Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton were before them and how routinely Ferrari have tripped over themselves, it’s remarkable that Monza has nonetheless remained a stronghold for the Scuderia in recent years.

Over the last five Italian Grand Prix weekends heading into 2023, Ferrari had given their fans plenty to cheer about on Saturdays – taking pole position in three of those five years for one of their best success rates of any venue over that same time span.

After showing encouraging pace in practice, setting the fastest time in both Friday’s second session and Saturday morning’s final hour, Carlos Sainz Jnr became the 14th Ferrari driver to secure pole position for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, joining the ranks of team mate Charles Leclerc, Kimi Raikkonen, Michael Schumacher, Niki Lauda, Juan Manuel Fangio and even Alberto Ascari – who Monza’s challenging third chicane is named for.

“Vamos! Vamos!,” Sainz exclaimed after learning he had taken pole position, holding his arm aloft in the cockpit, his finger to the sky, ensuring everyone around the Autodromo knew who was number one on this day.

“Honestly, this qualifying session, I enjoyed it a lot,” the pole winner said after the session. “I enjoyed the battle already from Q3 run one, where we did 1’20.5, all three of us. I knew it was going to be super, super tight and all about the details and risks going into the second run and it was really good fun.”

But Sainz had been oh-so-close to losing pole position to the man who had been quickest in seven of the last eight qualifying sessions. After pulling a tenth of a second on the Red Bull driver through the Della Roggia chicane until the last corner of Alboreto (formerly Parabolica), Verstappen got a better exit than the Ferrari driver and was gaining time on him all the way until he ran out of lap, just 0.013s behind Sainz.

The closeness between Sainz – the quicker of the two Ferrari drivers – and Verstappen – the much quicker of the Red Bulls – had been evident throughout the first two days of running. Ferrari had a slight but very valuable advantage in top speed on the fastest circuit on the calendar, with Sainz peaking at 350kph at the end of the pit straight at the start of his pole lap, four kilometres-per-hour faster than the Red Bull. He also had consistently higher speed than his team mate, Leclerc, suggesting that he may have been running slightly reduced wing levels compared to the sister Ferrari.

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Verstappen was content to be beaten in Q3 for only the fifth time in 2023. “I’m happy with second, to be honest,” he said. “Here in Monza it’s always very tight. Sometimes you might jump ahead, sometimes you’re just behind but I’m confident for tomorrow.”

Naturally, Verstappen has every reason to be confident. Few will need reminding that Red Bull have a much stronger race can than a qualifying car and he did not feel the need to be humble when asked if he felt his car would be quicker than the Ferraris on Sunday.

“I mean, so far this year, yes,” Verstappen said. “So hopefully it will be the same tomorrow.”

Prior to the weekend, Pierre Gasly suggested that Monza may be “the trickiest race for Max to win” – that if anyone can stick within DRS range of the Red Bull, the effect is so powerful that it would prevent Verstappen from escaping half a minute up the road as he has so many times in 2023. But with Verstappen the one having to get around him at the start, Sainz wants to do better than just stay within a second of the Red Bull.

“If I get a good start, I’m going to do everything I can to stay ahead of Max,” Sainz said. “I think, looking back at this year, 100% of races, they’ve been quicker and they’ve been clearly quicker – so that makes me feel like it’s not going to be easy at all and they’re going to try a way past one way or another.”

Asides from general race pace, Sainz is well aware that Red Bull are more consistent with their tyres over a stint than them. With Pirelli bringing a step softer tyres for the three compounds available this weekend, that may end up working more in Red Bull’s favour on Sunday.

Behind the likely fight for the win, George Russell turned a difficult weekend for Mercedes into a second-row start in fourth, to the surprise of many. But that is not stopping Russell from looking ahead going into the race.

“I think it’s going to be challenging,” Russell said. “I think we’ll have good race pace, the tyre deg doesn’t look very high. We need to be fast around the pit stops, I expect to have better tyre deg than Ferrari, so our only chance is to be faster on the pit stops and do something slightly different to them.”

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Alexander Albon realised the potential that many suspected Williams would have around the fastest circuit on the calendar, putting his car sixth on the grid ahead of the two McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, with Lewis Hamilton splitting the MCL60s. Unsurprisingly, Williams were near the top of the speed trap in qualifying, with Mercedes slowest of all in a straight line. No wonder, then, that Hamilton said Albon would be “almost impossible to overtake” for him and the McLarens.

For the first time since the Miami Grand Prix back in early May, conditions have been dry throughout the grand prix weekend and will remain so on Sunday. As such, the Italian Grand Prix will be a straight shoot-out between Ferrari and Verstappen.

If Sainz retains the lead at the start that will strengthen his hand, but what Ferrari could really do with is some choreographed lap one teamwork to get both their cars ahead of Verstappen. That may represent their best chance to win, albeit still a slender one, as Verstappen will be strong as the tyres start to degrade.

Drivers may only get one opportunity to jump their rivals through the pits as Pirelli anticipate the usual Monza one-stop strategy will be the way to go, despite the selection of softer tyres for this year’s race. Signs point to the hard tyre being almost certainly the compound of choice for that single stop, with the question of whether to fit the softs or the mediums for the start will come down to how aggressive teams want to be for the mad scramble down to the Rettifilo chicane off the line.

But while Ferrari genuinely do have their best chance of the year to finally break Red Bull’s stranglehold on the 2023 season, Sainz is under no illusion of how much of a challenge it will be to become the 12th driver to take a home victory for Ferrari in Italy.

“I think we will need to work well as a team and give it our best shot,” said Sainz. “I think it’s a good opportunity tomorrow, but also being realistic, the Red Bull should be quicker. We’re just going to try and make their life as complicated as possible and try to take the win.”

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Qualifying times in full

Position	Number	Driver	Team	Q1 time	Q2 time (vs Q1)	Q3 time (vs Q2)
1	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Ferrari	1’21.965	1’20.991 (-0.974s)	1’20.294 (-0.697s)
2	1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-Honda RBPT	1’21.573	1’20.937 (-0.636s)	1’20.307 (-0.630s)
3	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1’21.788	1’20.977 (-0.811s)	1’20.361 (-0.616s)
4	63	George Russell	Mercedes	1’22.148	1’21.382 (-0.766s)	1’20.671 (-0.711s)
5	11	Sergio Perez	Red Bull-Honda RBPT	1’21.911	1’21.240 (-0.671s)	1’20.688 (-0.552s)
6	23	Alexander Albon	Williams-Mercedes	1’21.661	1’21.272 (-0.389s)	1’20.760 (-0.512s)
7	81	Oscar Piastri	McLaren-Mercedes	1’22.106	1’21.527 (-0.579s)	1’20.785 (-0.742s)
8	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’21.977	1’21.369 (-0.608s)	1’20.820 (-0.549s)
9	4	Lando Norris	McLaren-Mercedes	1’21.995	1’21.581 (-0.414s)	1’20.979 (-0.602s)
10	14	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin-Mercedes	1’22.043	1’21.543 (-0.500s)	1’21.417 (-0.126s)
11	22	Yuki Tsunoda	AlphaTauri-Honda RBPT	1’21.852	1’21.594 (-0.258s)	Missed by 0.013s
12	40	Liam Lawson	AlphaTauri-Honda RBPT	1’22.112	1’21.758 (-0.354s)	Missed by 0.177s
13	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Haas-Ferrari	1’22.343	1’21.776 (-0.567s)	Missed by 0.195s
14	77	Valtteri Bottas	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’22.249	1’21.940 (-0.309s)	Missed by 0.359s
15	2	Logan Sargeant	Williams-Mercedes	1’21.930	1’21.944 (+0.014s)	Missed by 0.363s
16	24	Zhou Guanyu	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’22.390	Missed by 0.047s
17	10	Pierre Gasly	Alpine-Renault	1’22.545	Missed by 0.202s
18	31	Esteban Ocon	Alpine-Renault	1’22.548	Missed by 0.205s
19	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	1’22.592	Missed by 0.249s
20	18	Lance Stroll	Aston Martin-Mercedes	1’22.860	Missed by 0.517s

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Sector times

Position	Number	Driver	Sector one	Sector two	Sector three	Ultimate lap	Deficit to ultimate lap
1	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	26.701 (3)	26.988 (1)	26.605 (5)	1’20.294	–
2	1	Max Verstappen	26.758 (4)	27.049 (2)	26.5 (1)	1’20.307	–
3	16	Charles Leclerc	26.667 (1)	27.101 (3)	26.593 (3)	1’20.361	–
4	63	George Russell	26.889 (6)	27.159 (4)	26.594 (4)	1’20.642	0.029
5	11	Sergio Perez	26.904 (8)	27.171 (5)	26.574 (2)	1’20.649	0.039
6	23	Alexander Albon	26.672 (2)	27.363 (9)	26.724 (7)	1’20.759	0.001
7	81	Oscar Piastri	26.925 (10)	27.179 (6)	26.681 (6)	1’20.785	–
8	44	Lewis Hamilton	26.807 (5)	27.201 (7)	26.812 (9)	1’20.820	–
9	4	Lando Norris	26.9 (7)	27.27 (8)	26.749 (8)	1’20.919	0.060
10	14	Fernando Alonso	26.91 (9)	27.527 (11)	26.9 (10)	1’21.337	0.080
11	22	Yuki Tsunoda	27.032 (14)	27.462 (10)	27.078 (13)	1’21.572	0.022
12	27	Nico Hulkenberg	27.154 (17)	27.55 (12)	26.955 (11)	1’21.659	0.117
13	40	Liam Lawson	26.965 (12)	27.657 (13)	27.072 (12)	1’21.694	0.064
14	77	Valtteri Bottas	26.968 (13)	27.73 (14)	27.147 (14)	1’21.845	0.095
15	2	Logan Sargeant	26.94 (11)	27.771 (15)	27.199 (15)	1’21.910	0.020
16	24	Zhou Guanyu	27.051 (15)	27.978 (18)	27.309 (16)	1’22.338	0.052
17	20	Kevin Magnussen	27.321 (20)	27.829 (16)	27.379 (18)	1’22.529	0.063
18	10	Pierre Gasly	27.119 (16)	28.047 (19)	27.379 (18)	1’22.545	–
19	31	Esteban Ocon	27.296 (19)	27.859 (17)	27.393 (20)	1’22.548	–
20	18	Lance Stroll	27.267 (18)	28.076 (20)	27.363 (17)	1’22.706	0.154

Speed trap

Position	Number	Driver	Car	Engine	Model	Max kph (mph)
1	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	Ferrari	VF-23	351.9 (218.7)
2	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Ferrari	Ferrari	SF-23	350.8 (218.0)
3	24	Zhou Guanyu	Alfa Romeo	Ferrari	C43	350.1 (217.5)
4	40	Liam Lawson	AlphaTauri	Honda RBPT	AT04	350.1 (217.5)
5	77	Valtteri Bottas	Alfa Romeo	Ferrari	C43	349.4 (217.1)
6	23	Alexander Albon	Williams	Mercedes	FW45	349.1 (216.9)
7	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	Ferrari	SF-23	348.9 (216.8)
8	2	Logan Sargeant	Williams	Mercedes	FW45	347.6 (216.0)
9	31	Esteban Ocon	Alpine	Renault	A523	346.9 (215.6)
10	4	Lando Norris	McLaren	Mercedes	MCL60	346.8 (215.5)
11	14	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin	Mercedes	AMR23	346.5 (215.3)
12	22	Yuki Tsunoda	AlphaTauri	Honda RBPT	AT04	346.5 (215.3)
13	10	Pierre Gasly	Alpine	Renault	A523	346.3 (215.2)
14	11	Sergio Perez	Red Bull	Honda RBPT	RB19	345.9 (214.9)
15	1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	Honda RBPT	RB19	344.0 (213.8)
16	18	Lance Stroll	Aston Martin	Mercedes	AMR23	343.6 (213.5)
17	81	Oscar Piastri	McLaren	Mercedes	MCL60	343.5 (213.4)
18	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Haas	Ferrari	VF-23	341.3 (212.1)
19	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	Mercedes	W14	340.6 (211.6)
20	63	George Russell	Mercedes	Mercedes	W14	338.6 (210.4)

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Over to you

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