The first day of running at Imola gave little reason to believe the competitive order has changed significantly among the leading teams.
McLaren may have been comfortably ahead of Red Bull over a single flying lap, but the championship leaders have tended to reveal more of their car’s pace on Fridays than their rivals.In this, the first of three consecutive races where grid position is especially crucial, Max Verstappen’s knack for pulling together a superb qualifying lap will be especially vital. But Pirelli’s introduction of its much softer C6 tyre may complicate the picture in Saturday’s decisive qualifying session.
Teams’ 2024 performance in context
Last year’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix was the first race where McLaren demonstrated the potential of their upgraded car. Both their drivers qualified within a tenth of a second of Max Verstappen, although Oscar Piastri lost his front row start after being penalised for impeding.
Verstappen’s bid for pole was aided by a timely tow from Nico Hulkenberg. The fight for pole position could well be influenced by who benefits from a slipstream on the run to the start/finish line.
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Teams’ progress vs 2024
It’s typical for Red Bull to keep more of their pace in hand on Friday, so it’s little surprise to see they are further from their 2024 lap time than any team so far. Similarly, Verstappen has averaged eight tenths of a second quicker than Yuki Tsunoda so far this year, so it’s hard to take the sub-one-tenth gap between them from second practice at face value.
Teams’ 2024 and 2025 times
Last year Red Bull found half a second more than McLaren between second practice and qualifying. That sort of gain would put them right in the mix for pole position, which is exactly where they’ve been in recent races.
Verstappen, however, played down his chances of taking his fourth pole position this year. “We tried a lot of bits, some worked a bit better than others, but overall we’re not fast enough at the moment,” he said. “We definitely need a bit more work to just get better through-corner balance to go faster.”
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First and second practice times
| P. | # | Driver | Team | FP1 time | FP2 time | Gap | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren-Mercedes | 1’16.545 | 1’15.293 | 23 | |
| 2 | 4 | Lando Norris | McLaren-Mercedes | 1’16.577 | 1’15.318 | 0.025 | 23 |
| 3 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine-Renault | 1’16.696 | 1’15.569 | 0.276 | 21 |
| 4 | 63 | George Russell | Mercedes | 1’16.599 | 1’15.693 | 0.400 | 26 |
| 5 | 1 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull-Honda RBPT | 1’16.905 | 1’15.735 | 0.442 | 15 |
| 6 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 1’17.077 | 1’15.768 | 0.475 | 23 |
| 7 | 6 | Isack Hadjar | Racing Bulls-Honda RBPT | 1’17.641 | 1’15.792 | 0.499 | 19 |
| 8 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | Red Bull-Honda RBPT | 1’17.356 | 1’15.827 | 0.534 | 18 |
| 9 | 23 | Alexander Albon | Williams-Mercedes | 1’16.922 | 1’15.916 | 0.623 | 21 |
| 10 | 55 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | Williams-Mercedes | 1’16.597 | 1’15.934 | 0.641 | 19 |
| 11 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 1’16.641 | 1’15.943 | 0.650 | 22 |
| 12 | 87 | Oliver Bearman | Haas-Ferrari | 1’17.446 | 1’16.009 | 0.716 | 20 |
| 13 | 43 | Franco Colapinto | Alpine-Renault | 1’17.373 | 1’16.044 | 0.751 | 21 |
| 14 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin-Mercedes | 1’17.121 | 1’16.220 | 0.927 | 22 |
| 15 | 30 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls-Honda RBPT | 1’17.286 | 1’16.255 | 0.962 | 22 |
| 16 | 5 | Gabriel Bortoleto | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’16.925 | 1’16.339 | 1.046 | 23 |
| 17 | 18 | Lance Stroll | Aston Martin-Mercedes | 1’17.032 | 1’16.341 | 1.048 | 23 |
| 18 | 12 | Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 1’17.094 | 1’16.406 | 1.113 | 23 |
| 19 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’16.998 | 1’16.419 | 1.126 | 23 |
| 20 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | Haas-Ferrari | 1’17.662 | 1’16.420 | 1.127 | 20 |
Pirelli’s new C6 tyre was developed to offer an extra-soft option for street tracks where grip levels are low. As some drivers have acknowledged, it’s not well suited to a track with as many high-speed corners as Imola.
However as Nico Hulkenberg pointed out, teams may be reluctant to use tyres they need for the race, when the soft tyre is extremely unlikely to appear.
“I think it’s alright over one lap,” said the Sauber driver. “I saw, though, I think Fernando did his fastest on the medium, which was last year’s softest, so I think it’s going to be maybe interesting if people do something different.
“But, tyre allocation-wise, there’s actually not that much opportunity.”
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2025 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix
- Antonelli was tiring from home race at Imola attention by Friday – Wolff
- Ferrari struggling to recreate set-up which “worked well” in Shanghai – Hamilton
- Verstappen told Red Bull to use Tsunoda before “hold him up” call
- ‘Saturdays have been mine for years but for some reason it’s drifted away’ – Norris
- “Plan C?”: Why McLaren only got their strategy right for one driver at Imola
SteveR (@stever)
17th May 2025, 0:02
Verstappen’s pole time last year was 1:14.746, I’m sure we’ll see considerably faster times Saturday.
Jere (@jerejj)
17th May 2025, 6:32
Indeed, especially with the fastest FP2 lap time about half a second slower.
AlanD
17th May 2025, 0:44
One of the radio comenttors was saying that this year Red Bull is consistently slower in FP1 because they are taking a different approach to the practice sessions, and recknons we will see the usual gains from them by Q1.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
17th May 2025, 1:21
Max is likely to get pole.
Ferdi
17th May 2025, 6:35
So the car was developed around Checo!
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
17th May 2025, 10:09
So what were RBR doing that they no longer can do ? I can’t even remember but was it some sort of asymmetric braking that was hinted at ?
Small shout to Harry Benjamin, a breath of fresh air on sky f1 . Less local radio than the c4 guy and less of a giggly school boy than Croft. I hope Sky give him some more airtime, he’s as good as the much missed Ben Edward’s
anon
17th May 2025, 11:29
@tonymansell there was speculation for a while that they’d found a way to use asymmetric braking to help turn the car into the corners, and that they’d been forced to take that system off the car after the FIA carried out one of their more detailed inspections of the car.
However, that speculation died down after a while, and the conclusion was that Red Bull had made a similar mistake to that which Mercedes made a few years ago – i.e. the theoretical total maximum downforce that the car could produce was high, but it came at the cost of the car being so sensitive to changes in ride height that they ended up with a very narrow operating window.
That was reinforced by Newey giving interviews after leaving the team where he stated that he’d disagreed with the development path that others in the team were pushing for, and the fact that Red Bull changed part of the floor of their car back to what it had been earlier in the year.
As noted in the article, there has been a clear trend this year for Red Bull to run their engines in a low power setting during the practice sessions, and only then switching to the normal power mode for qualifying and the race itself (comparisons of the telemetry data from the practice sessions and qualifying or race laps show that the rate of acceleration and the end of straight speeds are noticeably higher than in the practice sessions).