The world champion took his third win-in-a-row at Imola this weekend after a dramatic finale, finishing less than a second ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris. Sergio ‘Checo’ Pérez put in a battling drive to come home in eighth place at a circuit known for its difficult overtaking.
As lights went out, Max Verstappen made the perfect getaway from Pole Position and although Norris made an equally strong start, the Dutchman managed to put his car well ahead as he swept through Tamburello. Norris was closely followed by Leclerc, Sainz and the second McLaren of Piastri.
Checo, like his team-mate, made a great start off the line from P11 on Hard tyres to muscle his way past RB’s Daniel Ricciardo around the outside. Having moved into the points early on, the Mexican settled into a reverse strategy to the rest of the top 10 who began on Medium tyres.
At the front, with clear air ahead, Max began to pull away from Norris and with seven laps on the board the Dutchman was almost two-seconds clear of the McLaren. Meanwhile, Checo was putting pressure on the other RB car of Yuki Tsunoda who had dropped to P9 after a slow start.
Both RB cars opted to be the first of the front runners to stop for fresh Hard tyres which meant Checo was promoted to P9 with Tsunoda out of his way. When the Haas of Nico Hülkenberg reacted to the RBs strategy, the Mexican then inherited eighth on lap 15.
By the start of lap 17, Max had eased to a 5.2 second lead over Norris. At the end of lap 23, Norris entered the pits to switch to Hard tyres targeting a one-stop race strategy. He emerged behind Checo and with old Hard tyres, he was unable to keep the Briton at bay for long.
When Max came in for his pitstop, a 2.6 second switch to hard tyres meant he rejoined in fourth place behind Hamilton. Temporary race leader, Leclerc, was followed by his Ferrari team-mate Sainz. The top three drivers soon came in for their own tyre changes and Max breezed back into the lead, 6.3 seconds ahead of Norris.
Checo, meanwhile, was now in sixth place on his starting Hard tyres and with his pace flagging he soon dropped back to eighth. At the end of lap 37 Checo at last headed into the pits to move to Medium tyres for the remainder of the race. Initially, he dropped back to his starting position of 11th, but the pace advantage afforded by his new Medium tyres meant he was able to swiftly reel in the drivers ahead.
On lap 39 he powered past the RB of Ricciardo and a lap later, with aid of DRS, breezed past Hülkenberg on the run to Tamburello. The Mexican’s next target was the second RB of Tsunoda and on lap 43 he again used DRS to steam past the Japanese driver on the pit straight to move up to P8.
At the front, radio silence from the team and Max characterised a controlled march to the chequered flag but it was suddenly broken by the World Champion who said “my tyres don’t work”.
Over the ensuing laps, the Dutchman’s 6-second lead began to shrink. Soon it was four, then two seconds ahead of the charging Norris. Despite the Tyres working with the World Champion and having fallen into DRS-range of the pursuing McLaren, he remained composed and wrestled his sliding RB20 to the flag 0.7 seconds in front of the McLaren.
Norris took second place, while Leclerc occupied the final podium position. Checo’s fresh tyres towards the end of the race helped him come home in P8 after recovering from an eleventh placed start.
Max Verstappen, securing his fifth win of the season said, “It was a close race today. I didn’t expect that the car would have that kind of pace at the beginning, which was nice and we were strong on the medium tyres.
“When we swapped to the hard tyres, it was a bit trickier to drive and more of a struggle to bring it to the end as tyres fell out of the operating window and we had really low grip. During the last 10 laps I was really trying to survive on the tyres and managed to keep Lando behind, but it required a lot of focus as we were on the limit with the penalty.
“However, we managed to work through and take the win; I was definitely counting down the laps until the end and it was a great feeling when we took the chequered flag! If you look at where we were at the beginning of the weekend, this was an extremely good result.”
Sergio Pérez, 8th at the flag, “We knew it was going to be a hard day today as the whole weekend was compromised from qualifying. Imola is a difficult track to overtake on so this was the maximum we could do today. We have a few things we need to analyse and certainly some work to do as we head into the next race, but I’m looking forward to Monaco and hopefully we will continue our strong season and get some good momentum back.”
Not long to wait for the next leg of F1’s second European race of the season which will see Oracle Red Bull Racing travel to Monaco on 26 May.