Max Verstappen showed once again on Sunday that he is fully capable of winning races if spared from physical failure. He convincingly won the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
Having already won the sprint race at Imola on Saturday, there was no action whatsoever for the Red Bull driver on Sunday afternoon, who collected at least 34 World Cup points in one weekend. World Cup leader Charles Leclerc made the afternoon even more beautiful on Verstappen by making a mistake at the end of the race and thus wasting a lot of points.
The start of a disaster for Ferrari
Verstappen, who retired due to technical problems in two of the previous three races, started racing on the wet Imola runway in pole position, ahead of Leclerc. The Ferrari driver missed his first meters and was immediately overtaken by Perez (Red Bull) and Norris (McLaren), and returned to fourth. The start of the other Ferrari driver was even more dramatic: Carlos Sainz collided with Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren) and the Spaniard was stranded in the gravel.
almost dried up
It wasn’t raining at the time, but the track was still treacherously slippery due to the previous rain. When the asphalt was almost dry, everyone decided to change the medium tire for dry weather tyres. Steam-filled Leclerc with a subsequent substitution tried to beat Perez in the battle for second place and also ended up well ahead of the Mexican, but Perez immediately overtook the Ferrari driver.
Margin expanded
For example, the Red Bull cars took first and second places, while Verstappen had a lead of more than seven seconds. Apparently Verstappen was also the fastest man on the track and widened the margin to around fifteen seconds. Leclerc chose another pit stop twelve laps before the end and Perez and Verstappen went along with that. It gave Leclerc the opportunity to put more pressure on Perez.
Leclerc in error
That’s when Leclerc overplayed his part: the World Cup captain took too much risk and slipped off the track, swapping out his front wing and back to ninth. In the end he rode to sixth place and only got 8 points. He did well behind Red Bulls second-placed Perez and leader Verstappen, who crossed the streak without being threatened and also had the fastest time.
Sprint
Verstappen won the sprint race in Italy on Saturday, after a nice duel with Leclerc. On the penultimate lap of the race, he passed Monaco and scored eight World Cup points, one point more than the Ferrari driver who crossed the line in second place. Verstappen added, on Sunday, another 26 points in the World Cup, which took him from sixth place in the World Cup to second place in two days. His gap against Leclerc reduced from 46 to 27 points.
Miami
The next race is in two weeks in the US. Then the Formula 1 drivers got to work for the first time on the brand new street circuit in Miami.
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