Lap 8
Leclerc passes Norris to go third.
Lap 15
Charles catches Perez until he is under two seconds behind, as the track gradually dries out.
Lap 18
Perez pits and Charles moves up to second. On the next lap, it’s Charles who comes out ahead of the
Mexican but he is powerless to defend as his tyres are not yet up to the right operating temperature.
Lap 41
The middle portion of the race is uneventful. Verstappen still leads Perez by 12 seconds and Leclerc by 14.
Lap 50
Charles pits and takes on Softs, as does Perez on the following lap with the positions unchanged.
Verstappen stops on lap 52, keeing the lead.
Lap 54
Trying to stay in Perez’s slipstream, Charles spins at the Variante Alta and damages the front wing, so that
he pits to change it, rejoining in ninth place.
Lap 56
Leclerc passes Kevin Magnussen and pursues Sebastian Vettel, overtaking the German a few laps later to
move up to seventh and then getting ahead of Tsunodo to finish sixth. Verstappen wins, followed home by
Perez and Norris.
Back to work
On the positive side, the F1-75 once again proved to be competitive and reliable, although this weekend, the
team’s closest rivals proved to be particularly quick. Now, all the team will simply roll up their sleeves and get
down to work to prepare for the next race in Florida, USA and the only new venue on this year’s calendar, the
Miami International Autodrome.
Charles Leclerc #16
It was a very tricky race. Third was the best result we could have secured today, as our competitors were very
strong. I struggled on the Soft tyres but when I saw an opportunity to overtake Perez for second, I went for it,
pushing a bit too much, when I should have stayed put to secure those points. We will analyse all the data
and come back stronger.
Carlos Sainz #55
This was an unlucky day. I braked well into turn 1, leaving enough space to my left, but unfortunately Daniel
(Ricciardo) lost control of his car a bit and hit me from behind, throwing me into a spin and into the gravel. It’s
a big shame because we were up for a good race, but there is nothing else I could have done differently at
that point to avoid it.
It’s tough to take, as today I wanted to have a good race in front of our fans. For the last two races things
haven’t gone our way at all, but I’m still confident we can turn it around. There are many races ahead of us
and you can be sure we will keep pushing. On to Miami.
Mattia Binotto Team Principal & Managing Director
Of course we are disappointed as we wanted a better result than this in front of all our fans. It was a difficult
race. Our drivers did not get perfect starts, possibly being on the worse side of the track. Charles’ first pit stop
was not the best either, which meant he was back out on track without the gap that might have allowed him
to fend off Perez and then he made a mistake trying to overtake him.
Carlos was very unlucky at the start and for the second time in a row, he was unable to finish the race. It’s a
real shame, not just because of the points lost, but also because he’s completed very few kilometres in the
last few Grands Prix. Nevertheless, we will not lose heart and we will continue to work calmly. We wanted to
give the fans something to cheer about, as they packed out the grandstands and the fields with a sea of red
to support us here at Imola. Naturally, we are disappointed not to have managed that, but there will be other
races and opportunities to put a smile on their faces.
Now we look forward to Miami and a new track, which makes it an even more compelling prospect. We will
continue to work hard to extract all the potential out of the F1-75 and to optimise the updates that we will be
introducing in the coming races.
George Russell
I’m relatively pleased to maximise the points available this weekend. Whether we’re getting the most out of
the car is a different story and I do think things have fallen slightly in our favour with these first four races. I’m
really happy with this P4, but if we want to sustain this position in the championship, we need to find more
pace. We’ve got these overall limitations with the car with the bouncing, and we know that we are struggling
with the tyre warm up and this is the coldest race weekend we’ve had by far this year. I think it’s been a bit of
a trend since Bahrain, we’ve progressively gotten a bit slower in qualifying, and I think that’s because Bahrain
is the hottest we’ve experienced so there was no problem with tyre warm up. Then we want to Jeddah, and it
was still hot, but the track was a bit smoother. Melbourne, a bit cooler. Here, very cold. And that’s when you
see the McLarens, Alpines, and Haases coming into their own but then struggling a bit more in the race. We
need to find a better compromise because we were fortunate today, we had a decent result, but ultimately, we
were starting far too low on the grid.
Lewis Hamilton
This was a weekend to forget, that’s for sure. Behind Gasly, we both had DRS so it was impossible to
overtake, and I lost a few places in the pit stop. This weekend, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
We live and we learn, and there’s not much else to say. I’ll keep working as hard as I can to try and pull it
back together, somehow. I hope for a better weekend in Miami, it will be difficult but I’ll try and get myself in a
positive headspace for the next one.
Toto Wolff
What is clear from the entire weekend is that we have work to do to deliver our drivers a quick enough car. We
saw with George what our car can do in clear air but it’s still not good enough. We missed out on adjusting
George’s front flap at the pit stop due to an issue which meant he had a car that was setup for wet for the
majority of the race so a great drive from him to hold on the P4 at the end. For Lewis, it was a simple case of
us not giving him the tool he needs. He was squeezed by the Alpine, and undercut at the pitstop, which left
him in a DRS train where it was impossible to overtake with our car. We are not producing a car good enough
or worthy of a World Champion like Lewis so we need to look at things for Miami, make a step forward in our
understanding and bring development to the car to fix our issues.
Andrew Shovlin
A great drive by George saw us salvage some useful points for fourth place from what has otherwise been a
thoroughly disappointing weekend. He made a really good start and managed the transition to dry very well.
We had an issue with the front wing adjusters at the pitstop and he ended up driving the dry stint with the wet
aero balance. It was an impressive effort to keep Valtteri behind but the understeer prevented him from being
able to close down the gap to Lando so he had to settle for fourth. Lewis has had a tough weekend from start
to finish through no fault of his own. The start was OK and he’d moved up to eleventh after Daniel and Carlos
tangled but we got undercut on the transition by a couple of cars, lost a bit of time with a slow stop and then
to Esteban who was released into Lewis’s path as they left the pits. The next 44 laps were very frustrating as
he was stuck in a DRS train and it was impossible to get through. We know where we are on performance
right now and we know where we need to get to. However, there are a couple of major issues with the car that
if we can fix, we can find a lot of that gap quite quickly but time is getting critical now and we need to move
forward in the next two races if we are to keep the leaders within any kind of reach this year.
Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal
“It has been a strong weekend from the team and to bring home 12 points between yesterday and today is a
deserved reward. We delivered upgrades that worked well, a brilliant job by the team at home, and the crew
were incredible both on Friday and Saturday night, with two rebuild jobs they undertook with strong spirit. Our
race today was positive: Valtteri had really good pace and was able to fight for P4 until the final lap; Zhou
always had a difficult job on his hands after yesterday’s crash, but did well to recover from a pitlane start to
finish 15th with some good overtakes on the way. There are so many positives we can take away from this
weekend, not just in terms of the result but also in the way we went about our business, and we can definitely
aspire to do even better in the next few races.”
Valtteri Bottas #77
“It was a fun race for me today! It’s always good to get points, we had a strong race in a car that felt really
good. I am happy with how everything went, even though we lost a bit of time in the pit-stop, but we bring
home ten points today so we’ll take it. I had a bit of a scare at the beginning of the race, when I couldn’t avoid
Ricciardo when he tangled with Sainz, but luckily we didn’t have any damage. The car had good pace,
especially once we went on the mediums, and only at the very end, when I caught George [Russell] I had
some graining on my rear right that cost me performance. The team is working really well, there’s a good
atmosphere and it’s nice to see the upgrades we brought to the track worked. There’s still a lot of work to do
and many races ahead of us, so we can still improve and have some fun weekends.”
Zhou Guanyu #24
“Not the result I wanted today, but there are still a lot of positives from me to take out of this weekend: not
just the performance I showed over the three days, but also how I got up to speed quickly in my first Sprint
race. The weekend started better than expected and I had a good qualifying, but yesterday really
compromised our final result. It was always going to be hard to make it into the top ten from the pit lane,
especially as today it was quite difficult to pass, and once I got past the Williams, the gap to the cars ahead
was too big. The rest of my race was quite uneventful, but I can still look at the things I learned in difficult
conditions and make sure I get back stronger in the next races.”
Esteban Ocon
“It was a frustrating race for us in the end where we’ve not scored any points. For me, it’s been a tricky one
since the beginning and the Qualifying result compromised the rest of my weekend so if you think about it,
where we ended up today before the penalty is not too bad. We lacked a bit of race pace and in the end we
were not quick enough to get into the points even without the five second penalty. It’s a really tight pit-lane but
we’ll be looking at exactly what happened in the debrief tonight to see if it could’ve been avoided. We’ll learn
and move on from this one, and I’m already looking forward to Miami.”
Fernando Alonso
“It was another unfortunate race for us this season. We made a decent start and moved up to eighth but there
was a lot of damage on the right side of my floor and on the sidepod, so we had no choice but to retire. It’s
unlucky as a small brush with Mick [Schumacher], which wasn’t intentional, destroyed our car and race. After
Australia I feel that I could have scored 20 or 30 points in the championship, and I have only two. It’s unlucky!
It’s a long season and there are plenty of points still to score.”
Laurent Rossi, CEO Alpine
“Plain and simple, this weekend was a disappointing one for the team and it’s the first race of the season
where we leave without scoring points. We must make sure this does not happen again this year as we have
much stronger potential than that. As a team there are many areas we must improve, and we must also
eradicate errors quickly if we are to achieve our ambitious goals. While we feel frustrated by today’s result, we
will count on it as additional motivation to not have this feeling again during the year. I’m confident in the team
to keep working hard and we absolutely must bounce back next time in Miami.”
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