Red Bull rebound, romp to dominant Verstappen-Perez 1-2 at Imola; Leclerc throws away sure Ferrari podium with late spin gifting Norris P3

After reliability woes cost them dearly in two of the young season’s first three races, team Red Bull came to Imola full of determination to put those issues behind them and enable their drivers to succeed to their full potential this weekend. By the end of the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, aka Imola, on Sunday it was emphatically Mission Accomplished. After both cars failed to finish in Round 1 in Bahrain and their ace Max Verstappen also DNF’d in Round 3 in Australia due to mechanical issues, Verstappen’s car ran perfectly and he dominated this first Sprint weekend of the season. The Dutch master qualified P1 on Friday, fought back against Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to win Saturday’s Sprint race and claim pole for the GP and then blistered the field for an easy win from the front on Sunday. Verstappen finished some 16.5-seconds ahead of his P2 teammate Sergio Perez, while also running the fastest lap of the race to earn the bonus point. So that made 26 points extracted from the race plus 8 for the Sprint win for a massive 34-point haul that enabled the flying Dutchman to vault back into the championship chase with his key rival this year, Leclerc. Ferrari and Leclerc also did their best to tighten things up through a series of unforced errors at the circuit named for their founder and his son, leading no doubt to brutal headlines in the Italian papers come Monday morning.

Pics courtesy GrandPrix247.com

The first embarrassment for the fabled Scuderia from Maranello came on Lap 1 of the contest when the Prancing Horse of Carlos Sainz and the McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo collided going into Tamburello side by side. While Ricciardo was able to crawl away from the scene and restart, Sainz was beached in the gravel for the second straight race, following up his Lap 1 DNF in Australia with a Lap 1 DNF in Italy, a stunning string of disappointments for the Spaniard. While the team showed their faith in Sainz by signing him to a new 2-year contract in the weeks between the two races, it’s clear that he has got to settle down and get some results for Ferrari if they are to have a fighting shot to beat out ultra quick Red Bull for the Constructor’s title. Frankly, these serious lapses from such an experienced driver are a head scratcher and Carlos had better find his confidence and poise in a hurry.

But that wasn’t the only misfortune to befall mighty Ferrari in front of their home fans, the always passionate and vocal tifosi. Perhaps outsmarting themselves a little, Ferrari decided to play a game late in the race and hopefully force Red Bull to respond. So with Leclerc sitting comfortable in third well over a pit stop ahead of the P4 McLaren of Lando Norris, they called their championship leader into the box for a set of fresh Soft Pirelli tires. The logic of the move — to at a minimum try to steal the fastest lap bonus point and at best get closer to P2 Perez by using a late race undercut — appeared at first to pay off, when Perez was forced to respond a lap later for his own set of Softs and then struggled to get them up to temperature on this cool damp day with Leclerc closing fast. The last surviving Ferrari chopped into Perez’s previously massive lead and got within striking distance with some thirteen laps left to try and wrest second place from the Mexican. With that second Red Bull well within sight, Leclerc set about hunting down Perez with an almost manic intensity. But that tunnel vision came back to bite the Monegasque when he took far too much curb entering Variante Alta and got airborne, losing control of his Prancing Horse and spinning off the track and into the wall. While Leclerc was lucky to be able to continue without crippling damage, he was forced to pit again not only for new tires but also to replace his damaged front wing. From a guaranteed P3, Leclerc dropped all the way down to P9 after the lengthy stop.

While the Ferrari team leader was able to make a strong sequence of passes to recover some positions, he was only able to salvage P6 by the time the laps ran out.  Understandably disconsolate, Leclerc was left to rue what might have been had he and the team not been quite as aggressive, as well as the presumptive 7 points they left on the table, the difference between P3 and P6, and who knows how many for Sainz after his disastrous opening lap deja vu. These are the kinds of mistakes that can be the turning point in winning or losing a championship and, while the season is only four rounds old, Ferrari and their pilots cannot continue to make them, just as Red Bull have got to insure that they’ve got their reliability issues cleaned up once and for all. To be continued…

Leclerc’s misfortune redounded to Norris’s and McLaren’s benefit, elevating the jubilant young Englishman to the third step of the podium and salvaging something even better than what had seemed a fine P4 on a day where Ricciardo was unable to score at all after his race was ruined by that opening lap kerfuffle with Sainz. Mercedes’s George Russell overcame his Silver Arrows so far woeful performance to take an excellent P4, all the more impressive when placed alongside his seven-time World Champion teammate Lewis Hamilton’s dismal P13 result. Former Mercedes man and current Alfa Romeo ace Valtteri Bottas was right behind Russell for the last ten laps or so but could never quite get close enough for a move and so settled for a more than decent P5. Yuki Tsunoda had his best result of the year for AlphaTauri in P7: Aston Martin scored points with both drivers for the first time, with Sebastian Vettel finding his footing in P8 and Lance Stroll in P10; and Haas F1’s Kevin Magnussen continued to impress on his return to the sport finishing a solid P9.

Top 10 finishers of the Emilia-Romagna GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race is in two week’s time — the debut of the Miami Grand Prix at the temporary Miami International Autodrome built within the Hard Rock Stadium complex, home to the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. With all the drivers starting from scratch in the Sunshine State, who can figure out this virgin circuit the fastest will be the key to race day success. Hope to see you then to find out how it all shakes out!