One week before Max Verstappen’s 17th birthday and ten days before his record-shattering first appearance in a Formula 1 weekend in Suzuka in 2014, Red Bull’s Helmut Marko was asked which grand prix driver, former or present, the exceptional young prospect could be compared to.
“Most likely Ayrton Senna,” Marko replied. “We expect him to be competitive from the first race. We are not playing the lottery – we know what we are doing. And success proves us right.”Less than a decade after speaking those words, Verstappen’s success had indeed proven Marko right. Matching Senna in championship titles and surpassing him for race victories, Verstappen has already cemented his place alongside the mythical Brazilian in the pantheon of the sport’s greats.
Thirty years on from the weekend in which Senna’s legendary F1 career and Roland Ratzenberger’s fledgling one both came to their sudden, brutal ends, Verstappen sat where Senna had, on pole position at the beloved Imola circuit, preparing for a challenging afternoon of trying to keep formidable opposition behind him for the race to come.
Norris would sit alongside him on the front row, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr moved up by virtue of a penalty for Piastri. The Ferrari pair were eager to provide the thousands of scarlet-clad Ferrari fans in the stands with a worthy return on their unwavering support.
Typically before the start of a grand prix, the question of what strategy to employ for the race ahead is a complex and difficult one. Not at Imola. The top ten starters all left the grid for the formation lap on medium compound tyres, suggesting that they would be taking the conventional one-stop strategy approach, with Sergio Perez out of position in 11th the first to opt for hards. It also meant that Norris would have no extra advantage to best the world champion on the run to the first part of Tamburello – something he had recognised on Saturday could ultimately decide the race.
Four-times world champion Sebastian Vettel circulated before the race began in a McLaren once raced by Senna. The Imola crowd may ordinarily reserve its cheers for Ferrari, but the fans showed full appreciation for the moment of remembrance, then shifted their attention back to the present.
When the lights went out to begin the seventh round of the 2024 Formula 1 world championship, Verstappen looked under serious threat of being passed in the opening seconds of the race. Norris later described his launch off the line as “mint”, but that he then “had so much wheelspin” as he tried to out-sprint the Red Bull. By the time they reached the braking zone for the first left hander, Verstappen had the line and the length to sweep into the corner and emerge with his lead intact.
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At the end of the first lap, the top six starters entered the pit straight in the same order they had started. Lewis Hamilton had picked up seventh from Yuki Tsunoda, while Hulkenberg had passed both RBs to gain eighth. DRS was activated the moment Verstappen crossed the timing line, but it could only be activated from their second time down the main straight. With a gentle reminder that the detection zone was on the run down to the first Rivazza, Verstappen ensured he was just beyond a second ahead of Norris on his way down the hill, meaning even if Norris crossed the finish line a second behind him, he could not open his rear wing.
Pirelli had predicted the pit window for those starting on mediums would open on lap 21. Russell in sixth put this into practice by becoming the first of the leading top eight drivers to make his switch to hard tyres, giving him 41 laps – just over 200km – to run on the hards. Norris was the next in on the following lap, but despite having been warned to push before his stop to emerge ahead of Perez, the McLaren driver had the frustration of seeing the Red Bull breeze by him on his way out of the pit lane. After waiting a whole lap to reach the DRS zone, Norris managed to clear Perez having lost just a tenth of a second to Verstappen over the course of the lap.
By now, Verstappen was becoming agitated over the radio about the grip rapidly fading from his front tyres. He had fallen out of the 1’20s long ago and was now in the high 1’21s before finally being granted relief in the form of fresh tyres at the end of the 24th lap, locking up his wheels as he slammed the brakes for the pit entry. He returned to the track in fourth, with Norris now just under five seconds behind him.
Once the two Ferraris had pitted, Verstappen reassumed the lead of the race once more. Piastri managed to jump ahead of Sainz through the pit cycle and was now around 11 seconds off Verstappen in fourth. But while Piastri maintained a near-identical pace to the leader, Norris in second could see from his pit board that he was slowly dropping away from Verstappen, with Leclerc behind him slowly closing up.
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“Why am I so much slower than the guys behind?”, Norris asked engineer Will Joseph. “Lando, they’re using their tyres a lot more than we are,” Norris was told.
“Yeah, but I have no pace,” Norris retorted. “What’s he doing in turn 15 [Variante Alta]?”
Throughout the weekend’s junior category races in Formula 2 and F3, those who had shown patience with their tyres had tended to reap the benefits later on. Williams junior Franco Colapinto grabbed victory on the final lap of Saturday’s F2 sprint race by managing his rubber to attack on Paul Aron. With Verstappen having complained about his front tyres towards the end of his medium stint, McLaren had the same approach in mind.
“The hard tyre looks a difficult one,” Joseph explained to his driver. “People had a lot of deg’ on it, so it’s tricky. It’ll be able tidying up the details in every corner.”
For several laps, Norris followed his team’s advice, allowing Verstappen’s lead to grow to just over seven seconds. At the same time, third-placed Leclerc was beginning to catch both of them, new race engineer Brian Bozzi encouragingly telling him he was the “fastest man on track”.
By lap 42, Leclerc was just within DRS range of the McLaren, but still not close enough to challenge Norris for his position. However, on lap 47, a mistake at the Variante Alta chicane caused him to take to the grass, falling to two seconds back. That would prove to be the closest Leclerc would come to Norris for the rest of the race.
With the Ferrari out of his mirrors, Norris could refocus his attention on the leader ahead. For lap after lap, Norris chipped away at Verstappen’s lead, going from just over six seconds by the time Leclerc fell away from him to just over four seconds with ten laps remaining. Getting under the five second barrier put Verstappen under serious pressure, as he had already received a black-and-white warning flag for three track limits strikes – one more over the remaining laps would almost surely cost him the win.
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Although Verstappen’s hard tyres were younger than the McLaren’s, he was clearly struggling more to extract grip from them. With seven laps remaining, his lead was down to two seconds. With five to go, it was less than two.
Norris was faster but he was also catching micro-slides of his own. Rivazza, Villeneuve, Piratella – Norris was fighting to wring every last kilometre-per-hour out of his tyres. But now he was starting to run out of laps before he was running out of tyres.
A critical moment came on the penultimate lap, when Verstappen reached the DRS detection point on the run to Rivazza more than a second before Norris, keeping him out of range for one previous more lap. But it was close: Norris had been just seven-thousandths of a second away from getting it.
Even so, Norris was able to use his ERS deployment to be almost 15kph faster than Verstappen on the run to turn one. That proved the last true opportunity for Norris as Verstappen kept it clean over the final four kilometres to take the chequered flag and his most thrilling victory of the 2024 season so far.
“I was not sure if I could keep him behind,” the winner later admitted. “But I was just trying to do the best I could, pushing as hard as I could with the grip that I had. Luckily, it was just enough laps.”
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Norris was only seven tenths of a second away from consecutive race wins after his excellent tyre management efforts had only just failed to pay off. “I was just praying for one more lap,” he said. “I was just praying for someone to say ‘one more lap.’
Leclerc finished almost eight seconds back in third. Despite missing out on the battle for the win, he was satisfied with Ferrari’s race pace and pointed to Saturday as where he truly lost the chance to win. “You always want to be on the top step of the podium,” he said. “But considering everything, I think we have lost mostly what could have been yesterday in qualifying.”
Piastri claimed fourth for McLaren as Sainz finished eight seconds behind in fifth. Hamilton finished sixth ahead of his Mercedes team mate thanks to Russell’s second stop – Russell claiming the fastest lap point as consolation. Perez ended a weekend to forget in eighth, while Lance Stroll rose from 13th on the grid into the points thanks in part to his team mate’s early pit stop. Tsunoda rounded out the top ten for a point in his team’s home race.
But on a weekend dedicated to paying tribute to two lives lost before any of the top five finishers were born, Verstappen had matched one of Senna’s all-time qualifying records on Saturday, then produced a gutsy drive on Sunday to emulate some of the great champion’s most famous victories in Jerez and Monaco. Befitting of a driver chosen by one of Ratzenberger’s countrymen as showing much the same potential as Senna a decade ago.
Before Verstappen can surpass Senna with a fourth world championship, he could first break one of his last remaining records with a ninth-successive pole at the same Monaco street circuit Senna became so synonymous with. Even if Red Bull may no longer enjoy a clear advantage over the rivals in the performance of their car, Imola proved that they continue to have perhaps the best advantage of all in the form of Max Verstappen.
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2024 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix
- Ferrari expect qualifying gain after spotting rivals’ power strategy tactics
- How Alonso and Stroll copied Verstappen’s tactic plus more unheard Imola radio
- Verstappen beats Hamilton’s winning rate with Emilia-Romagna GP victory
- How Russell resisted losing position to Hamilton “for no reason” with extra stop
- “Lando’s found some pace”: Unheard radio from Verstappen-Norris Imola duel
F1 race reviews
- Norris achieves feat which eluded Hamilton by taking McLaren to constructors’ title
- Verstappen masters race track and rule book with satisfying Qatar victory
- Russell strikes gold in Vegas as Verstappen’s title comes at a canter
- Verstappen counters critics with champion’s drive in soaking Sao Paulo
- Sainz seizes swansong Ferrari win as Perez endures home race horror show
mathias
20th May 2024, 7:49
VER won only because NOR was blocked a few laps by PER, after NOR’s pit stop.
Mayrton
20th May 2024, 8:14
I am glad at least one person believes there is added value in having Perez around hahaha
Senna
20th May 2024, 9:17
Have you eaten sour grapes? Max did a fine job, that is not so hard to say….
Armchair Expert (@armchairexpert)
20th May 2024, 9:41
Norris finished 2nd instead of winning only because he underperformed in quali in the fastest car.
Stephen Taylor
20th May 2024, 12:11
Max only qualified on pole because of tow from Hulk
Erik
20th May 2024, 13:06
You Hamiltoncultists are something to behold. Complete mental breakdowns, and you people just cannot control yourself not making an *diot of yourself can you?
Dex
20th May 2024, 16:33
Then anyone could’ve won it, since Perez “blocked” Norris for everyone (himself included), not just Verstappen. Grow up.
Nck T.
20th May 2024, 18:03
There’s much bigger news than this petty argument… Logan out and Bottas in at Williams. Who’s more exciting than Bottas?! I hope it’s a one-year deal or he probably won’t try. It’ll be interesting to see Albon have a decent benchmark.
Nick T.
20th May 2024, 18:06
BTW, I was kidding. The news is not exciting at all. Another, boring “safe pair of hands decision.”
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st May 2024, 5:34
Well, bottas is a decent driver, so if he’s indeed replacing sargeant it’s good news.
Mayrton
21st May 2024, 6:58
Come to think of it, RedBull should hire Bottas. He has proven to be a stellar wingman and surely will deliver way more consistent than Perez, plus he won’t botter the nr1 driver.
Kata
21st May 2024, 0:52
So, that was just racing then.
MacLeod (@macleod)
21st May 2024, 8:00
You know Yuki blokked Max making him lose a second …. so that happens every driver. So Max didn’t win because Lando was blokked …
Billy (@roobyroo)
20th May 2024, 8:19
The end of the race was reminiscent of the Alonso/Schumacher battle there in 2005. All it needed was an ad break just at the most inopportune moment to relive that moment.
Nick T.
20th May 2024, 17:54
Haha, I bet most people here can’t don’t even know what you’re talking about. On Bring Back V10s or whatever that pod is called they do this race and 15 mins of the episode is Ted justifying / lamenting the ad timing.
osnola
20th May 2024, 19:26
look here for reference:
osnola
20th May 2024, 19:26
link gone…
https://youtu.be/XlqWlM-YI_s
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
20th May 2024, 19:35
Don’t get me started on that…
But it did remind me of the fuel-stop era / error, when we kept running out of laps just as a decent race seemed to be breaking out.
An Sionnach
20th May 2024, 9:09
Unless Max gets more car for Monaco, it seems unlikely he can best the McLarens and Ferraris once again in qualifying, even if he wrings everything from the car. Norris, Leclerc and friends can’t slip up forever. There is always the possibility that the Red Bull will work better there. I’m not sure there’s a straight best car as there has been in the past, and the strengths and weaknesses of each on the same track are not always easy to understand. McLaren seemed better here, not not in every department. It’s difficult to know how much Max is making up, but I suspect that in this instance it was the difference between a win and… perhaps not just second place.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st May 2024, 5:42
It really depends on which driver you compare him to, perhaps 2021 hamilton, who to me seemed a bit worse than verstappen could’ve lost pole and maybe the win, but a 2nd place should’ve been possible, and ofc if you look at perez it’s very clear what an average driver does with such a car.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
22nd May 2024, 22:28
so your saying leclerc is going to win monaco from start to finish with lando and versteppin trading blows to keep the fans interested ?
stjs16 (@stjs16)
20th May 2024, 11:58
As a McLaren fan, I have to say that Max’s qualifying was world champion level, Saturday won the race. The cars are much closer now, RB still the one to beat, not sure how much internal factors are affecting race prep.
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
20th May 2024, 14:08
One must wonder if HUL will be chosen to replace PER. Poor strategy by McLaren. They have 2 cars versus Red Bull’s 1 car. They needed to force VER to drive the wheels off for the entire 63 laps and not just the last 10. They let VER drive for 50 laps with a 4 second lead. Also love Mercedes pitting RUS at the end. Maybe he’ll keep quiet about his tires for the rest of the season.
Osnola
20th May 2024, 14:55
The most impressive part wad the first stint. If you look at the laptimes verstappen lapped every lap within 0.01/ 0.02.
Compared with Norris who often lapped 0.1/0.3 apart.
The consistency by verstappen is unbelievable.
And in the end , trying to avoid a possible disastrous tracklimit he still wad able to stay ahead. Norris driving the wheels of his car (and did several tracklimit breaches doing so each lap) was unable to reach verstappen.
Even if he would have reached verstappens drs range it wad very unsure if he would have passed max. Looking to piastri behind sainz did not bode well.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
20th May 2024, 17:14
Why would anyone wonder than when Hulkenberg is confirmed to be at Sauber next year and Audi in 2026.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st May 2024, 5:45
Probably wishful thinking after the impressive quali performance he had, since hulk never got a chance at a top team.
Cem
20th May 2024, 14:10
All these Max/RB haters have been complaining non-stop on RBs dominance. Once cars got closer, now they are all rejecting the possibility of Max doing a excellent job in a competitive race. Norris is doing as good as Max in a competitive car. If we are going to criticise anybody, they are Norris, Piastry and McLaren which failed to get the result on Saturday. This time Max was faultless and yes he took advantage of Tow. Max was under thread, he did not make a single mistake under pressure while Norris had multiples while chasing. McLaren is a GOOD car and they will keep pushing RB and probably will win more this year. And MAX is one of the best we have ever seen…
Dex
20th May 2024, 16:33
A drive worthy of Senna? I expect it will be an 8 this time!
Ben
20th May 2024, 18:11
Very overhyped. It was an easy win until 5 laps from the end. The track is insanely difficult to overtake especially when the cars were so even on pace, so as long as he made no mistakes it was easily his.
someone or something
20th May 2024, 19:06
Yeah, massive hyperbole. While it was quite refreshing not know for sure who was going to win, nothing really happened. A gap that used to be rather big became rather small, but in the end, it was a non-event. Coulda, woulda, and all that, but Norris caught Verstappen too late for even a single offensive move, and conversely, Verstappen didn’t have to perform a single defensive move. That wasn’t the nailbiter it’s being talked up to be.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st May 2024, 5:46
They said worthy of senna exactly because he died at this track 30 years ago.
someone or something
21st May 2024, 12:21
In other words: Pretty low bar (good race on a weekend of rememberance), pretty pompous words (“drive worthy of Senna”) – what else can you call that if not a massive hyperbole?
Alberto
20th May 2024, 18:11
Catching Max is one thing, passing him is another. Considering there is only one DRS zone in Imola it would have been difficult for Norris. I don’t know why everyone thinks it was that straight forward. I think we were robbed of a great battle that is all.
baasbas
20th May 2024, 19:48
@Alberto
Robbed. By whom?
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st May 2024, 5:47
Mclaren, who waited till it was too late before telling norris to try and catch verstappen.
Alberto
20th May 2024, 20:06
Nobody. It just didn’t happen unfortunately. Not every comment on racefans is accusatory witch hunt I would hope!
baasbas
20th May 2024, 22:08
@Alberto
Pardon me for assuming your comment might be categorised as such. In my defence: a robbery supposes a robber
wbravenboer
20th May 2024, 20:28
Well written report. I always check out Peter Windsor’s analysis, he has lots of technical remarks and sometimes explains why or what happened. I am impressed with Lando’s and Max’s driving, both were going to the limit, it’s great to see Lando improving and getting better and stronger. McLaren is back and it is good to watch. What is also clear to see is how good Oscar is becoming, it helps that Lando has a strong team-mate who is pushing him. Red Bull has the weakest line-up of the top-teams, I wish that Sainz could go there.
It is so sad what we never got to see Senna becoming at least a four time world champion, I have no doubt he would have gotten more.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st May 2024, 5:49
4, 5, 6, 7 titles, it’s just a number, the sad thing is imo we never really saw a schumacher vs senna title battle, which would’ve happened the year senna died and most likely also the following year, since the 2 cars were still pretty close.