Lewis Hamilton has had to dismiss rumours of retirement already this weekend, with television pictures showing an apparent disagreement between the seven-time world champion and Toto Wolff fuelling speculation that all may not be well at Mercedes. It’s certainly not been a great start to the season for the 37-year-old – can he go better today? He’ll start 14th, and he’s already going raising the sartorial stakes with this rather fancy button-down. Like Innocenzo’s easel.

It was a solid Saturday for McLaren, with P5 and P6 for Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo despite significant disruption during Free Practice 2. Ricciardo thinks they might be even better today.

“It’s definitely like the ‘on paper’ result is really good,” Ricciardo reflected on yesterday’s performance. “[Yesterday morning was] all about race prep and we obviously didn’t get it.

“I’ve done over 200 races so it’s not like I’m not prepared to race but knowing what tyre to start on, where to set things like the front wing and the switches in the car and all these little things, this is certainly valuable, especially in a Sprint race, where you don’t have a pit stop or anything. These are things that obviously compromise you.

“If we did the race again now, I would definitely change some things but with all that being said, you see ahead of us it’s Red Bull and Ferrari, so actually the result was good. I just think we will be a faster car [today].”

Fighting talk from Sergio Perez – he fancies his chances today.

A fine victory for Max Verstappen yesterday, fighting back after a rough start to proceedings to pass Charles Leclerc and strike the first significant blow of the weekend at Ferrari’s home circuit. But if it was up to the reigning world champion, he wouldn’t have got the chance – despite the win, Verstappen still isn’t keen on sprint race weekends.

“I’m still not a fan of sprint races because in the end it doesn’t change anything,” Verstappen explained yesterday.

“It doesn’t matter if you have such a good fight during the sprint race or during the actual race. I just like the way the whole weekend goes much better with a normal weekend schedule.”

Plenty more points and prizes to be won today, but here’s how things are looking after yesterday’s totting up. Not particularly pretty for Mercedes.

It’s been a weekend of wild weather in northern Italy, and the wet stuff is coming down again a few hours before the lights go out. It looks likely to be a damp one.

Race day number two in Imola on the first sprint race weekend of 2022 – and how good was the format’s season debut yesterday afternoon?

Emilia Romagna Grand Prix starting grid

1. Max Verstappen – Red Bull

2. Charles Leclerc – Ferrari

3. Sergio Perez – Red Bull

5. Lando Norris – McLaren

6. Daniel Ricciardo – McLaren

7. Valterri Bottas – Alfa Romeo

8. Kevin Magnussen – Haas

9. Fernando Alonso – Alpine

10. Mick Schumacher – Hass

11. George Russell – Mercedes

12. Yuki Tsunoda – AlphaTauri

13. Sebastian Vettel – Aston Martin

14. Lewis Hamilton – Mercedes

15. Lance Stroll – Aston Martin

16. Esteban Ocon – Alpine

17. Pierre Gasly – AlphaTauri

18. Alex Albon – Williams

19. Nicholas Latifi – Williams

20. Guanyu Zhou – Alfa Romeo