The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix had a sprinkle of rain to spice up the race in its second running. This after being retained as a replacement venue on the calendar. Some drivers excelled whilst others had a nightmarish race. Here are the top of the class and struggle bus riders from the second round of the 2021 season:
Top of the class:
Max Verstappen – Qualifying: 3rd | Race: 1st
Should have had pole, yet found himself outqualified on merit for the first time since 2018. Not that this would matter though, an excellent start (which has become quite rare for Red Bull in damp conditions) saw him take the lead into turn 2 with an aggressive move on Lewis Hamilton.
From there, the rest of his race was mostly a doddle, though he was helped by Lewis’ mistake when lapping traffic. One slight blemish was his half-spin at Rivazza on the rolling start after the red flag, but he breezed home with a lead of 22 seconds and just one point behind Hamilton in the championship standings.
Max put behind the disappointment from the narrow loss in Bahrain to take a rather dominant victory in Imola and end his wretched form in Italy. Once again, using second gear on intermediates set him apart from the grid, after famously using this trick at the 2017 Chinese GP to take 8 places on the opening lap in that race. This time around, the start was what won him the race.
Lando Norris – Qualifying: 7th | Race: 3rd
Imola is a track that Lando knows well from his junior career, and the McLaren driver looked to be on the pace all weekend. After posting the second-best time in FP3, Lando also managed to set purple times in the first two sectors of his final Q3 run. He thus posted a time good enough for P2 (which would later be beaten by Pérez) but his lap time was deleted for track limits.
Lando was visibly disappointed with P7 and apologised to the team for the mistake, but he managed to turn it around on Sunday. He dropped to P9 on the opening lap after being hit by Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll, but he steadily worked his way back up to sixth.
McLaren then politely asked teammate Ricciardo to move out of the way and let Lando through, as Lando was quicker in pace. Daniel complied which meant that Lando moved up to fifth. With strong pace near the end of the intermediate tyre stint, Norris would jump up to fourth in the pits whilst Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez was serving a time penalty for overtaking under the safety car.
The British driver then overtook Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc immediately on the red flag restart after McLaren gambled on the soft tyres. He would put up a mighty defence to hold onto P2 against Hamilton, but with three laps to go, a recovering Lewis Hamilton got by into Variante Tamburello.
Ultimately, Lando came home in a well-deserved third, taking his first podium on the road after inheriting his maiden one in Austria 2020. This was Lando’s strongest F1 race to date, but hopefully, his takeaway from Imola is focussing on keeping his car within the white lines, rather than passing judgement on others in Twitch streams.
Charles Leclerc – Qualifying: 4th | Race: 4th
Another consistent weekend for the Monegasque. Ferrari has made improvements, but it’s clear that they are ultimately the fourth fastest team for now. Yet a second consecutive 4th place start and finish inside the top 5 shows that the Scuderia are moving in the right direction.
It could have ended very differently after Charles span at Acque Minerali on the formation lap, but unlike Red Bull’s Pérez and Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Räikkönen, he regained the places in the correct manner. Charles had a decent start and held onto the coattails of Perez in front of him, capitalising on the Mexican’s error at Variante Alta on the opening lap to take P3.
After Hamilton’s mistake on lap 30, Charles was 2nd but he would eventually slip down to 4th. Firstly, being passed by Norris on the restart after the McLaren driver gambled on taking the soft tyres 30 laps to the end, whilst Hamilton then managed to get by in the closing laps with the assistance of DRS into Variante Tamburello. Charles could have capitalised on Verstappen’s half-spin at the red flag restart to take the lead, but didn’t have team radio for much of the race.
Overall, it was a solid weekend and P4 was very much the best that Charles could do on the day, if Ferrari had fitted the softs after the restart and Leclerc had a working radio, it may have been a different story.
The struggle bus:
Yuki Tsunoda – Qualifying: DNQ | Race: 12th
Captaining the struggle bus from Imola is Yuki Tsunoda. Rookies will have crashes and I’d be lenient on most of the other tracks, but Imola isn’t one for Yuki. It’s a track that he’s done a number of testing days on and it’s his team’s home circuit, so it wasn’t the finest weekends for one of the stars of the Bahrain GP.
His weekend was pretty much over when he slid into the barrier on the exit of Variante Alta (turn 15), ripping his gearbox in half on his first flying lap in qualifying. He would start last on the grid, also taking some engine component penalties.
His race was actually going rather well. Tsunoda kept it clean whilst working his way up to 12th before the red flag. He then moved up to 9th following the crash between Valtteri Bottas and George Russell, and Kimi Räikkönen’s spin during the restart procedure.
However, his race then unravelled rapidly. A bold move on Lewis Hamilton into Variante Tamburello saw Tsunoda ahead of the Mercedes driver, but he spun into the gravel on the exit, dropping back to the rear of the field. The Japanese driver would then pick up a five-second penalty for abusing track limits at turn 9. Whilst it’s a hot topic of discussion, track limit penalties are quite rare in F1.
He would finish the race 13th but was later moved up to P12 after a hefty 30-second time penalty for Kimi. This was just a scrappy weekend for Tsunoda, but that qualifying crash may haunt him later in the season with enforced engine penalties.
Valtteri Bottas – Qualifying: 8th | Race: DNF
Not quite captaining the struggle bus, but having a bad enough weekend to be sitting in the tour guide’s seat, is Valtteri Bottas. I’m not mulling over who caused that red flag incident and the drivers’ reactions, because we get the benefits of replays and not racing at nearly 200mph with split-second reaction times. I’m just going to deal with the facts of another dreadful outing.
A poor qualifying left Valtteri starting 8th whilst his teammate was on pole. During the race, Bottas was a lowly 9th after losing two places at the start. Hamilton was about to lap him before taking a trip through the gravel on lap 31. Bottas only moved up when it became apparent that AlphaTauri’s gamble on wet tyres for Gasly was the wrong choice. He also squandered a three-second lead over Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll after jumping him in the pits when switching to slicks, slipping back from 8th to 9th as he struggled with tyre warm-up, even though he was one of the last drivers to make the switch.
So, a difficult qualifying and losing further places during the race is already bad enough, but that was not all… He was legitimately being overtaken by a Williams. It’s embarrassing for Bottas, who is seemingly regressing during his time at Mercedes. Whatever carnation of Valtteri we’re supposedly receiving, the Bottas 3.0 type performances are becoming rarer and these painfully mediocre performances are becoming more common (think back to the spinning class in Turkey or his woeful race at Monza in 2020).
My patience is severely running thin with Bottas. There are bad days at the office but I can’t keep seeing this second seat of Mercedes, who are ultimately the team to beat, languishing so far behind the other when there is so much talent on the grid and in reserve.
Nicholas Latifi – Qualifying: 14th | Race: DNF
It’s a shame for Latifi that his race ended on lap 1, because he was having a fairly decent weekend. Looked stronger than teammate Russell through all of practice and Q1, but ultimately would qualify 14th, three tenths off George.
In the race, he was running directly behind George, but then span at Acque Minerali (turns 11-13) on lap 1, dropping down to 18th. In re-joining the track Latifi failed to notice the Haas of Nikita Mazepin and clipped the front left tyre of the Russian driver, spitting the Williams into the wall on the run between turn 13 and Variante Alta, ending his race.
An outside shot of points was there but he came away red-faced from a promising weekend.
Sergio Pérez – Qualifying: 2nd | Race: 11th
After a compromised Friday when Sergio collided with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon in FP1, Saturday was one of Sergio’s best days in F1. The Mexican put his car in P2 and certainly had the pace to take pole. He settled for his first front row start in F1 (he qualified P2 in Baku in 2016 but had a gearbox penalty demoting him to 7th).
P2 was still a strong starting place and ensured that he outqualified Max in just his second race at Red Bull. His race saw him go backwards pretty much from lights out. Firstly, dropping down to fourth after a sluggish start and a mistake made at Variante Alte. He would then slide off the track at Piratella under the safety car, losing a further two places to Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren) and Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri).
Pérez retook his P4, therefore was given a 10-second time penalty (not stop/go as the graphic stated) which he would take at the pits. Despite his penalty, Sergio was still 4th when the race resumed after the red flag. After he went in the gravel at Variante Villeneuve, however, he tumbled down the order. He could only recover to 12th on the road before post-race penalties for other drivers were applied.
What started as a strong qualifying ended in a pretty forgetful Sunday as Sergio made three significant errors, whilst his teammate dominated the race and took victory.
Some highs and plenty of lows from this weekend, a few teams might be looking at their bank accounts with the cost cap in mind after a number of hefty crashes. F1 has a week break and will be back at another replacement venue for 2021, the equally-picturesque Portimão in Portugal at a later time of 3 pm for the race on Sunday 2nd May.
