This weekend was the second Grand Prix of the 2021 Formula 1 season at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari di Imola - where Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger sadly died 27 years ago.
Qualifying was held on Saturday and Lewis Hamilton achieved his 99th pole position and was ready to lead the race on Sunday. Perez and Verstappen, both Red Bull drivers, followed behind in P2 and P3 and Ferrari’s Leclerc was fourth on the grid.
The race was certainly action-packed, after a good start despite the rain.
When the lights went out, Hamilton fell back to P2 as Verstappen took the lead after some contact at Turn 2.
On the first lap, Latifi made contact with Haas’ Mazepin, which meant a safety car was deployed. During the safety car deployment, Perez maintained P4 but was later dealt a 10 second time penalty, which ultimately knocked him out of the points, along with a couple of off-road skirmishes.
McLaren’s Lando Norris had an excellent time in qualifying with purple sectors, but unfortunately his time was deleted for exceeding track limits; Lando ended up placing seventh on the grid behind teammate Daniel Ricciardo in P6.
During lap 18, Ricciardo let Norris go past up into fifth after the team told him, “We need to see Lando’s pace in clean air” based on Norris' radio communication with the team. This turned out to be a great decision as Norris powered through the rest of the race, showing everyone what he can do.
Lap 31 saw Hamilton slide off into the gravel and hit his front wing against the wall. Thankfully he managed to reverse back onto the track and made his way to the pits for repairs, meaning he was still in the race.
Things for Mercedes weren’t looking good as Valtteri Bottas crashed with George Russell on Turn 2 during lap 33. Both drivers were okay but their race was over. The race was suspended and a red flag was deployed.
With the race stopped, the top 10 were: Verstappen, Leclerc, Norris, Perez, Sainz, Ricciardo, Stroll, Raikkonen, Hamilton and Tsunoda.
When given the green flag, Verstappen held the lead and Norris flew past Leclerc snatching P2!
On lap 55 Hamilton managed to fight his way back through the field and took third from Leclerc. This left the top three as Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes.
As the race neared its end, the fight for second continued and Hamilton ultimately overtook Norris and achieved P2.
The Imola Grand Prix was the first race that had two Brits on the podium since 2012 when it was Jensen Button and Lewis Hamilton; with it being in Italy, it was also good to see Ferrari having a great race and being back up there, scoring some points.
After qualifying on Saturday and feeling disappointed with P7, Lando Norris had a phenomenal race and did the whole of his team, and his fans, proud with his second F1 podium. His fans showed their support and happiness by voting him ‘Driver of the Day’, which is certainly a well-deserved title.
Imola’s top three did exceptionally well and, I think, they could all be in the running to win the world championship this year.
The next time the drivers will be racing will be in Portugal on the Algarve International Circuit. That race is on the 2nd May, and it’ll be very exciting to see who lands a podium then.
Until next time...
Images from Instagram @F1
Amazing blog! And congrats to Lando! :)
Another really good post 👍 and race was definitely action packed! Way to go Lando 👏
Great post and F1 write up of the race weekend! It was an awesome race, full of tactics and incidents, and so good to see Lando excelling with a podium! On we go to Portugal - can't wait!