Lance Stroll (P10, 1 pt): 6.5/10
Lance Stroll will be happy to have picked up his first championship point of 2022. He did it in typically understated fashion, rarely attracting attention but quietly getting on with the job at hand. Just P16 in first practice, he breezed through the first round of qualifying only to be caught out by the worsening conditions which left him slowest in Q2 and starting the sprint from P15, while his team mate Sebastian Vettel went on to take part in the final round top ten pole shoot-out. Stroll made no headway in the sprint, but had a flier when the lights went out at the start of the Grand Prix with a pass on Lewis Hamilton putting him up to P11. Fernando Alonso's retirement then put him into the points where he found himself stuck behind Yuki Tsunoda. The AlphaTauri was able to fight its way out of the DRS parade with passes on Kevin Magnussen and then Vettel, but Stroll couldn't follow and focused on keeping a tight hold on that valuable championship point, and duly brought the Aston Martin home in P10 safe and sound.
Kevin Magnussen (P9, 3 pts): 7/10
Haas - and Kevin Magnussen in particular - enjoyed a brilliant start to 2022 in Bahrain and Jeddah, but fell back to earth in Melbourne when both cars failed to finish in the points. So which version of the team would we get in Imola? The fact that both Magnussen and team mate Mick Schumacher were in the top five in first practice was a promising sign, and the Dane then used the changeable conditions to snap up fourth on the grid for the sprint. Unfortunately that was rather flattering to the VF-22 which wasn't nearly as fast in the warm, dry conditions of the Saturday afternoon sprint where he lost four places in the course of 21 laps. But that still meant a top ten spot on the Grand Prix grid, and a great start to the race saw him power his way up to fifth place in the opening corners. Unfortunately once the track started to dry out, the continuing lack of pace from the car saw him dropping back again. Passed by George Russell on lap 11 and by Valtteri Bottas the next time around, Magnussen was back down to eighth by the time he pitted on lap 18. That dropped him behind Sebastian Vettel, where he stayed for the rest of the afternoon at which point he picked up two points at the chequered flag to add to the one he'd already secured in the sprint.
