The 2024 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was far from a Formula 1 classic, but it featured plenty of visible evidence that the Imola circuit was pushing all 20 drivers to their limits.
This has inevitably led to featured outings as well as performances that others would quickly like to forget.
Here is our selection of the main winners and losers:
Winner: Max Verstappen
Victories in the virtual and real world for Verstappen this weekend. And he had to work hard for both.
“The (hard) tires fell out of the operating window and it was like driving on ice,” he explained.
“It was really sharp and you can feel when the tires are no longer gripping. Like at turn 7, I almost ended up in the grandstand at one point.”
Verstappen got around it brilliantly, however, driving “really weird” racing lines and never exceeding the limits of his not-fully-compliant RB20: “You can’t suddenly force half a second when you don’t have the balance. “
He remained grateful for Red Bull’s (and McLaren’s) rear wing choices that protected him on the straights and will feel Imola was a real victory against the odds given he was only truly “nowhere” on Friday’s long stints. -Josh Suttill
Loser: Sergio Pérez
Like the RB19, the RB20 has been a good enough car not only for Perez to rack up silverware when at the top of his performance bracket, but for him to sometimes get away with being in the down.
But it wasn’t that car this weekend. Hence this exit from the second quarter. Hence a banal first pass with minimal progress. Hence a race transformed into a total cancellation due to damage caused to the car by a few off-track excursions.
Verstappen’s drop in pace at the end of his own stint made Perez’s run slightly better – both just lost temperature.
But it’s also true that Verstappen’s retirement showed how useful it would have been to have a rear gunner in second place in this race – and Perez was far from providing that safety net. – Valentin Khorounzhiy
Winner: McLaren
Yes McLaren and Lando Norris lost battle, but they have the best indication yet that they can win the war.
Norris proved Miami was no fluke with his all-out charge late in the race that put far more pressure on Verstappen than the Red Bull driver was able to put on Norris late in Miami.
This by no means confirms that McLaren is the second-fastest car in F1, but this is the second weekend in a row it has gone head-to-head with Red Bull and it’s a remarkable turnaround from an early mediocre in 2024. -JS
Loser: Ferrari
If Red Bull and McLaren are winners, Ferrari must be classified as losers.
Yes, he’s still a long way from Mercedes (who have much, much more work to do to catch up), but Ferrari had a significant upgrade and Charles Leclerc had solid early stint pace compared to Norris.
But it turned out that Norris was just working hard to get his tires into the right window. Once that was done, Leclerc had no more answers and had to settle for a distant third place.
Both Leclerc and Carlos Sainz complained that the team’s ERS deployment was not up to par compared to that of Red Bull and McLaren.
Sainz in particular struggled with the balance of his Ferrari and seemed to be behind Leclerc all weekend. -JS
Winner: Lance Stroll
Stroll’s two-point tally is par for the course for what is probably (roughly?) the fifth-fastest car in F1, and that owes a lot to the specific first-stint extension strategy he used.
But he did his part, taking the best result an Aston Martin driver could reasonably hope for – after a weekend in which he looked a strong opponent for Alonso, then didn’t relent when Alonso beat him. did.
Obviously this should be the norm. -VK
Loser: George Russell
Russell essentially sacrificed an intra-team victory so Mercedes could get an extra point.
You get the feeling that Russell wasn’t totally on board with this sacrifice, but he followed the order anyway.
“As a driver you want to finish in the highest position possible, and all weekend I was ahead of my teammate,” Russell said after the race.
“I was in the lead the whole race, comfortably. Then I kind of lost the position for fun. We got the extra point.
“As I said, I’m not going to talk about it tonight. It’s 6th place, it’s not for a podium or a victory.”
As he says, it’s only for sixth and seventh places, but no racing driver will take pleasure in starting an intra-team fight that he seemed certain to win. -JS
Winner: Kevin Magnussen
It was truly the ideal response to Miami. After driving there so controversially that McLaren wanted him banned from a race, and then leaving Imola in qualifying in Q1 because (ironically) a McLaren was in the way, Magnussen appeared to face a difficult race in battling close to the back while his Haas teammate Nico Hulkenberg battled for the minor points places.
But Hülkenberg gradually fell back after a fast start, beaten into the top 10 by the disappointing Red Bull of Perez, the recovering Aston Martin of Stroll and the impressive (all weekend) Yuki Tsunoda.
Magnussen started in 18th, but overcame both Saubers, both Alpines and passed RB Daniel Ricciardo towards the end, finishing just one place and 1.157 seconds behind Hulkenberg.
A very good Sunday performance from a guy fighting for his future in F1. -Ben Anderson
Loser: Fernando Alonso
Alonso’s mistake on Saturday morning will be the lesson of the weekend here, although he should still have had a chance in Q2.
But is it his unusual mistake that should worry him – or the fact that Aston’s development path doesn’t appear to be going anywhere at the moment?
The car flirted with a race victory at Monaco last year, but you’d be very brave to bet something like that would repeat itself in 2024, and the early verdict on Aston’s latest package is equivocal (Alonso) to disappointing (Stroll).
Hopefully, better cars will arrive during Alonso’s multi-year contract that kicks in soon. -VK
Winner: Red Bull’s pressure story
It may not have been Ferrari who challenged Red Bull this Sunday, but their team boss Fred Vasseur summed up an important point very well after the race.
“Good news for me, good news for F1, good news for the championship. You have three teams within seven seconds after 70 laps,” he said.
“It’s less than a tenth per lap. It’s been almost the same since the start of the weekend, and we’ll start from scratch next week in Monaco, with a different track layout, different corners.”
We potentially have three different teams capable of winning multiple F1 races in a single season for the first time since 2019.
You no longer have to approach every weekend and Sunday with only a faint hope of an interesting fight for race victory. -JS
Loser: Alex Albon
The good news for Albon and Williams – as he himself pointed out after the race, although he is at pains to call it really positive – is that his main rivals are not scoring too much and that they are not not found in too different a position. Last year.
But the fact remains that the upgraded and lighter FW46 still wasn’t particularly convincing at Imola, even before the post-pit stop wheelie drama completely torpedoed its grand prix.
The recent RB surge poses a bit of a problem for Williams’ quest to put something on the board here – and, fresh off signing Albon to a contract extension, Williams will need to show a lot more to silence those who were intrigued by Albon’s long-term commitment. . -VK
News Source : www.the-race.com
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