THE EMILIA ROMAGNA GP IN 5 KEY MOMENTS
F1 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND 4
1 Jury’s out on upgrades as Red Bull tames Ferrari on home ground
It would be easy to say Red Bull’s commanding 1-2 finish in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, following Max Verstappen’s victory in Saturday’s sprint event, vindicated the team’s decision to introduce an upgrade on the RB18. But it’s too early to be so definitive. Really this was a story of fine setup margins, changing conditions, and blunders by both Ferrari’s drivers.
This being a sprint weekend, the track sessions were arranged disadvantageously for any teams planning to evaluate upgrades, with just one practice period before qualifying on Friday. Wet weather then rendered Friday’s practice running largely irrelevant so Red Bull’s decision to stick with its new floor and cooling package (saving 4kg) was, as Helmut Marko acknowledged, a “risk”.
The first dry running came in qualifying, resulting in a messy session as drivers scrambled to bank fast laps before more rain arrived. Ferrari’s Carlos
Sainz was one of several drivers to provoke red flags, “surprised” as his car snapped when he took too much kerb at Rivazza during Q2. Max claimed pole ahead of Charles Leclerc in a wet Q3, but not through car performance – he just drove a cleaner lap, while two more red flags (of five in total through the session) denied Leclerc a proper opportunity to make amends for his scruffier first effort.
In dry conditions on Saturday Leclerc got much the better start and led convincingly until his rightfront tyre began to suffer, enabling Verstappen to close in and pass for the lead. But was the Red Bull the faster car, or had Charles simply asked too much of his tyres as he fought to keep Max out of DRS range early on? Had Red Bull achieved a marginally better setup to mitigate graining?
On Sunday, Leclerc’s race was defined by more rain ahead of the start, and the obstructive presence of Pérez. With a dry line forming in some places around the track, starting on the wet side of the grid compromised Leclerc’s getaway and enabled both Pérez and Lando Norris to sneak into second and third. Getting past the Mclaren and then probing at the defences of the second Red Bull meant Charles was asking more of his tyres than the untroubled Verstappen up front. Sainz was already out of the picture, nerfed into a spin at Tamburello on lap one by Daniel Ricciardo.
Managing two cars against one enabled Red Bull to pit Pérez for slicks first (at the end of lap 18) so, although he fell behind Leclerc when the Ferrari pitted, Pérez had the advantage of tyre warm-up and immediately reclaimed second place. Thereafter, even when Leclerc had the slipstream and DRS (finally enabled on lap 34), Pérez had enough straightline speed to fend him off. This is a factor of power unit configuration as well as aero, as evinced by Leclerc’s engine ‘clipping’ (running out
of recovered energy) at top speed – Ferrari’s power unit is set up for greater hybrid deployment out of corners, an advantage elsewhere but not here.
Leclerc’s stop for softs on lap 49 was a gamble to “reset the tyre picture”, according to Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto. Although it had the desired effect of making Red Bull follow suit, Charles got “too greedy” (in his words) on the kerbs at the Variante Alta and spun, damaging his front wing and giving Verstappen and Pérez a clear run to the finish.
“We brought upgrades but I don’t know how much that brought us,” said Verstappen. “We were on top of everything better than in Australia and sometimes that’s more important than upgrades. I think we just did a better job today as a team.”
2 Imola sprint underlines extent to which DRS flatters new regs
While there was much to commend about the first sprint race of the season, those sections of the commentariat who immediately hailed it as a triumphant vindication of F1’s new technical rules were getting a little ahead of themselves. What we can say is, based on the evidence of this and the preceding races, that DRS is now a more powerful influencer on overtaking than ever before.
Imola has always been a fast and flowing track on which it is remarkably difficult to overtake. A tricky pitch indeed for the sprint format, which was trialled with mixed results at three rounds last year. In response to criticism that the races degenerate into World Touring Car Championshipstyle processions after the start, F1 and the FIA have tweaked the points allocation so that finishers up to eighth place are rewarded, as opposed to the previous three. Mooted changes for the future include a divorce from its influence on the grid for the grand prix.
A typically frantic opening lap ended with Leclerc leading, after Verstappen got far too much wheelspin when he let his clutch out, but then the Safety Car was deployed to cover the broken Alfa Romeo of Zhou Guanyu, who was tagged into a spin at the Piratella by Pierre Gasly. When the race restarted Leclerc was able to break out of DRS range almost immediately, only to be chased down and passed by Verstappen as the Ferrari’s rightfront started to grain. This was the first pass for the lead, other than at the start, in a sprint race so far.
That this was down to setup choices and driving style rather than compound selection was underlined by the performance of the three drivers whose teams opted for medium Pirellis rather than softs: Kevin Magnussen, Mick Schumacher and Nicholas Latifi. Not among the frontrunners, for sure, but Magnussen had bagged fourth on the grid in the wet qualifying session.
Haas made its decision based on trying the softs for the first time in dry free practice that morning, fearing they would not last the distance. But it put Magnussen at a disadvantage in the early phase of the race: though he held on to fourth at the start (earning a black-and-white flag for weaving), he was passed by Pérez’s Red Bull, Daniel Ricciardo’s Mclaren and Sainz’s Ferrari on consecutive laps once DRS was enabled. Valtteri Bottas relegated Magnussen to eighth two laps from the end.
DRS accounted for the majority of the overtaking in a sprint race which – to raise another regular criticism of the format – reset parts of the grid in pace order as Pérez and Sainz reclaimed ground after a troubled qualifying and the likes of Magnussen and Fernando Alonso slipped back. But at least there was plenty of overtaking – something which couldn’t be said of Sunday, when it was wet off-line and the sole DRS zone was disabled for half the race…
3 Mclaren’s recovery might be real
Half a minute behind the leaders, but in a podium position nevertheless, was Lando Norris. Granted, Mclaren’s first podium of the season was aided by attrition and the errors of others, but it provided further evidence the team has turned a corner after the severe setback of the Bahrain season opener.
Mclaren had the fourth fastest car in Australia, and in Imola Norris qualified third and finished fifth in the sprint, while Daniel Ricciardo was sixth – enough for Norris to say, “We’re now seeing Bahrain [where neither driver finished in the points] as a little bit more of an outlier compared with the last few weekends.”
In the grand prix Norris had a lonely race to third after Ricciardo took out Sainz at the first corner – enough of a racing incident for the stewards to write it off, but Ricciardo still went to the Ferrari garage to apologise. Does Mclaren now have the third fastest car? Norris reckons that’s “too difficult to say” given the interplay of variances in car characteristics over different circuits.
“The Mercedes wasn’t so bad this weekend,” said Norris. “I think we were a little quicker than them, probably throughout. The Alfa Romeo was maybe quicker. I think we just executed a great race from our side.”
George Russell was fourth for Mercedes, a position earned chiefly through a combination of starting on the dry side of the grid (in 11th), then neatly capitalising on the Ricciardo-sainz shunt at Tamburello as well as further contact between Mick Schumacher and Fernando Alonso. Qualifying and the sprint were miserable affairs for both Mercedes drivers, though team boss Toto Wolff remains confident the W13 is inherently the third fastest car on the grid when it can get its tyres in the operating window. On top of its well-documented porpoising issues, the car struggles to generate enough heat in its tyres, which was a limitation in the sprint as well as in qualifying, where Russell and Lewis Hamilton fell short of the top 10. An equipment malfunction also meant Russell didn’t get a frontwing adjustment when he stopped for slicks, giving him understeer for the remainder.
Starting 14th, on the wet side of the grid, made the grand prix a horror show for Hamilton. Stuck behind Yuki Tsunoda’s Alphatauri in the opening stint, he lost more places when Esteban Ocon’s Alpine was unsafely released ahead of him in the pits. Lewis then became embroiled in a DRS train behind Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly
4 Alfa Romeo can be disappointed with fifth
George Russell spent the closing laps fending off a very lively series of challenges from the former occupant of his seat. Valtteri Bottas certainly had the pace for fourth in his Alfa Romeo, and might have been in a position to challenge Lando Norris for what ultimately became third place. But while team boss Frédéric Vasseur proclaimed this “a strong weekend”, Alfa Romeo must feel 12 points represents a sub-optimal outcome.
Bottas completed only a handful of dry laps before the start of Saturday’s sprint race, the result of a broken exhaust which forced him to stop during Q3. That ultimately forced a chassis change owing to the routing of the heat-damaged wiring loom. The gearbox casing was also damaged. Parc fermé regulations meant Bottas would start the sprint from the pitlane if the team worked overnight; rather than squander a top-10 start, Vasseur took the risk of missing FP2 if the work wasn’t completed in time – and that is what came about.
Having qualified 14th, Zhou Guanyu successfully completed a sprint-race distance on Pirelli’s softs during practice, enabling the team to be confident about that choice during Saturday’s race. But he was then eliminated from the sprint – and in effect from the grand prix points – when he clipped the front of Gasly’s Alphatauri at the Piratella on lap one and went into the barriers.