Everyone expected the safety car to feature at some point in the Imola Grand Prix. This was a logical assumption, as it was deployed at all previous runnings of the race in the modern era.
Fans also expected the Red Bulls to be back on pace on Italian soil, after a slump in performance at the previous race in Miami. But neither of those things happened. At least, it looked set to be that way.
The Red Bull duo struggled on Friday, with Max Verstappen really only finding a chunk of time on Saturday. And this was with the input of the Austrian team’s two simulator drivers, who did double shifts back at the factory to find a setup that’d work for them.
On Sunday, Verstappen started on pole, with Piastri second on the road. But a penalty dropped him to fifth on race day, with McLaren teammate Lando Norris on the front row. At the start, Norris had the better initial launch, but Verstappen retained his lead and gradually pulled away.
But not by the margin that we’ve been used to. A struggling RB20 and a suite of upgrades for the McLaren meant that the dominance once enjoyed by the Milton Keynes-based team appears to have dwindled.
The Ferraris were matching the McLarens and the lone Red Bull upfront early on in the race too. As the tyres started to wear down however, the Ferrari lost pace. This was true after the pit stops as well, with Leclerc being able to keep up with Norris initially until later on in the stint.
The Mercedes duo couldn’t really make inroads on the cars ahead, with Russell and Hamilton being locked in a race-long battle in no-man’s land. They were much quicker than the rest of the mid-field, but lacked a small amount of pace to challenge the front runners.
Meanwhile, Perez, who started 11th, made up multiple places on the contra strategy. Embroiled in a battle with the VCARB duo and the Haas of Hulkenburg before his pitstop, Perez quickly fell quite a distance back to the trio. But the superiority of his car and his fresh set of tyres meant he clawed back his position, and the laptime, in just a handful of laps.
In the end, Verstappen wins again, but only by a small margin. Lando Norris, with better tyre wear than the Red Bull, managed to close the gap consistently in the closing stint. Unfortunately, he ran out of laps to make it a back-to-back double victory. Leclerc completed the podium.
Piastri and Sainz closed out the top five. Mercedes opted to pit Russell with a handful of laps to go gun for the fastest lap. This meant he lost a position to Hamilton, but the team would then net an additional point for the attempt.
Perez, Stroll and Tsunoda complete the points finishers. Albon had pitstop woes and lost two laps as a result, and Alonso also finished a lap down to close out a horrendous weekend for the Spaniard.
The F1 circus is headed to Monaco next, with the weekend starting on the 24th of May and raceday itself being on the 26th of May.
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