Nothing to do for Ferrari and McLaren, it's still Verstappen on pole at Imola!

The qualifying for the Emilia Romagna and Made in Italy GP, or to put it briefly Imola, once again gave us a pole position for Max Verstappen, at 7 out of 7 under the heading "starts from first position". An unexpected performance after the difficulties faced in free practice, the reward for which for the World Champion is another record: in fact, the Dutchman equals the maximum number of consecutive pole positions in a season (with Alain Prost's 7 in 1993) and all-time (with Ayrton Senna's 8 between 1988 and 1989).

As always, before starting with our analysis of what happened on track in Imola, here's the final classification of this qualifying session:

A more significant pole position than usual, with McLaren and Ferrari very close!

Just like the last GP in Miami, here too in Imola it would have been difficult to predict a pole for Verstappen after free practice... Indeed, the Red Bull driver even appeared to be in more difficulty yesterday than on Friday at the Miami International Autodrome, incurring in a streak of driving mistakes that we rarely see him make.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The impression was that of a very "loose" single-seater in the middle of the corner, with grip losses which - exiting the corner - made its behavior unpredictable even for a driver with innate sensitivity like Max. And the stopwatch, consequently, marked a gap close to half a second compared to his rivals, above all Leclerc.

But already during the night something changed, with an important work carried out by Jake Dennis on the Red Bull simulator which suggested a decisive setup change to the English-Austrian team. We don't know what it is in detail, but this adjustment (together with a less windy track condition) allowed the RB20 to return to being the single-seater that we witnessed in the first races of 2024.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The rest was done by the talent of the World Champion, with a lap (1'14"746) which at the end of Q3 allowed him to keep at bay the McLarens of Piastri (1'14"820, but with a grid penalty we'll talk later on) and Norris (1'14"837), and the Ferraris of Leclerc (1'14"970) and Sainz (1'15"233). For the record, it's important to point out that in the lap which earned the pole to Verstappen, the presence of Nico Hulkenberg - ultimately in P10 - ahead of him on the main straight was decisive: in that portion of the track alone, the slipstream gave Max a speed delta of 10 km/h compared to Leclerc, who probably on the eve of these qualifying was the driver most likely to get pole...

Talking about the two above-mentioned teams (McLaren and Ferrari) it might be interesting to do an analysis:

  • The McLaren MCL38, following the important updates brought in Miami, has finally corrected the weakness that afflicted its performance in the last two years: we're talking about aerodynamic efficiency, a factor that matters less at Imola than elsewhere, but which in a close qualifying like today's made the difference between being ahead the two Ferraris and not doing so... Furthermore, there's a "new" strength in which the English car is currently unmatched: traction! When exiting corners, Piastri and Norris have had no rivals since free practice, which shows how the aerodynamic platform of the MCL38 manages to extract a lot of grip from the tyres...
  • The Ferrari SF-24, which instead brought the updates right here in Imola, after having briefly tested them on a filming day in Fiorano (but we'll talk about these updates shortly in a dedicated article), had to give up some of its strengths to "smooth out" the weaknesses of a racecar that hasn't been deficient at all. In particular, the main weakness of the SF-24 was the apex speed in slow corners, where the mechanical grip isn't totally subordinated to the aerodynamic one - a factor which instead made the Ferrari excellent in fast corners. On the track near the Santerno river the situation seemed rebalanced, with the result that the Maranello team's car appeared strong in all sectors, without excelling in a specific area;

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

From a race perspective, the limited overtaking possibilities that the narrow Imola circuit offers make starting positions decisive, even more so if you consider that - with fairly limited tyre degradation - the strategy factor will be less important than elsewhere. This gives Verstappen's pole a greater specific weight and, at the same time, makes Oscar Piastri's second quickest laptime a missed opportunity. With a 3 place penalty on the starting grid due to the impeding on Kevin Magnussen in Q1, the Australian will therefore be fifth at the start: it will be very complicated for him to get the better of his teammate and Leclerc and Sainz, after he had deservedly defeated all three of them in qualifying trim. But the application of the rules seems to me, in this case, to be textbook.

Mercedes continues their swing of results, with Russell in P6, just one thousandth of a second behind Sainz!

Close behind what currently appear to be the three teams in the best shape (i.e. Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari), there's once again Mercedes. If we think about how inconsistent the W15 has been since the first qualifying in Bahrain, the gap of just one thousandth that kept Russell in sixth position behind Carlos Sainz is incredible.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Thinking about the difficulty in overtaking at Imola, for Sainz it would have been almost a condemnation to have to deal with the traffic of George's Mercedes, if the latter had qualified ahead of him... Of course, the race start can still subvert this scenario, but it remains food for thought for the English-German team: how is it possible that, in the third year of these technical regulations, they still haven't understood the range within which their car can perform consistently?

Toto Wolff said this week that the Mercedes engineers have in mind which factors enhance or penalize the performance of the W15, but judging by the results of the free practice sessions and qualifying, every weekend it seems that this is not the case: it hurts to say it, but the Brackley team seems like a shadow of the one that won one World Championship after another at the beginning of the turbo-hybrid era of Formula 1.

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Indeed, Lewis Hamilton aboard the other W15 was unable to do better than eighth place in 1'15"504, also preceded by the VCARB of an amazing Yuki Tsunoda, in P7 with a laptime of 1'15"465. This result, combined with Daniel Ricciardo's ninth position in 1'15"674, shows how the home weekend for the team from Faenza is giving them an edge: the two VCARB drivers can in fact give their best on a track they know by heart, being (along with Misano) the track where all the team's tests and filming days are carried out. In short, Yuki and Daniel know every inch of Imola, and you can bet that this gave them a hand in completing an optimal qualifying.

Perez surprisingly out in Q2, while the Alpine team surprises in the midfield

Among the drivers excluded from Q2 was Sergio Perez, who failed to enter the top ten by just 15 thousandths of a second (in this case ousted by Daniel Ricciardo): his flop can be - at least in part - explained by the crash which in FP3 had sent him into the barrier at the Variante Gresini, previously known as the Variante Alta. His impact hasn't been a serious one, but something that certainly takes away confidence in view of a close qualifying like the one in Imola.

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

A real shame for Sergio, given that on Friday he was even close to Verstappen in terms of laptimes; today, however, Max changed speed while - on the other hand - he finds himself with a "miserable" eleventh starting position for the race...

The two Alpines did well, with Esteban Ocon in P12 (with a laptime of 1'15"906) and Pierre Gasly in P15 (with a laptime of 1'16"381). As in Miami, the French car allowed its two drivers to pass the Q1 cut and break into the top fifteen: a small satisfaction that becomes more consolatory if you consider that the two were on the last row in the very first GPs of 2024.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

On a technical level, an important role in the progress of the French team is played by the weight reduction that the A524 has undergone: now that the car has finally reached the threshold of the minimum regulatory weight, it has easily been able to gain 3 to 4 tenths of the (large) gap they had from the top guys. And this, consequently, brought them into the midfield!

A single pitstop race is expected, with a potential traffic nightmare!

As mentioned, if there's one characteristic of Imola that makes drivers go mad, it is the extreme difficulty in overtaking even when you find yourself behind a slower car: the single DRS zone (compared to the two or three of most of the circuits on the calendar) and the reduced width of the track mean that, on many occasions, overtaking those in front becomes the task of the strategists at the pitwall.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

But in free practicewe saw that tyre degradation won't be a key factor at a strategic level, so it seems likely that the race will be tackled with just one pitstop around a third of the way through: this will make the start all the more important, so that everyone will try to make as far progress as possible in order to express all the potential that their single-seater will be able to unleash.

So the race starts at 3.00 pm CET: enjoy the show!

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