You see the title in the banner? Yeah, that the name of this seventh Grand Prix, and is a typo trap for me, so I am going with the nickname Imola, which is the name of the town in Italy, not too far from Bologna. Per Wikipedia: The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix is a Formula One motor racing event held at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, often referred to as "Imola" after the town where it is located. The event takes the name "Emilia-Romagna" from the Italian region where the circuit is located. This track has been raced for F1 for 30 years, and Red Bull's Max Verstappen has won the last two. Also of note is that Haas driver and Eye Candy driver of the circuit week, Nico Hulkenberg in all of his 200 plus racing in any circuit, has never raced on the Imola track!
We have another driver who has signed a contract that runs thru 2026! Alex Albon has agreed to continue to race for Williams, locking down one of the many seats open after this 2024 season. Now is a good time to do the usual team/driver graphic for THIS year, so far!
To the Imola (pronounced "Emola", like Emma), track we go for our practice sessions, and mercifully for you (and my typing), not much happened in the first two practices. I've decided to just note what was umm...noteworthy. :) I will mention the aerial shots of this track and surrounding areas are so Italian villa-like gorgeous- I was looking for Diane Lane several times to see if she was "Under the Imola Sun!". Also, this is basically a "home race" for Ferrari, btw! P1: It had rained the day before, but the skies were sunny and filled with puffy white clouds and temperature around low 70's on this track that has 19 turns, of which turns 10 thru 13 were a problem! William's Alex Albon's car decided it did not want to run laps today, and just simply stopped- he was able to cruise it over to the grassy area as we got our first red flag. Drivers complained that the track was "bumpy", and indeed, several cars were bouncing as they zipped around the corners and straights (ahem...meaning a straight line down the track!). Red Bull's Max Verstappen was NOT happy with his car, as he and the car spun into the gravel TWICE on turn 11 and 13 during laps; this made for some very colorful radio exchanges between him and his race engineer. Oh, Haas had their rookie driver, Ollie Bearman (remember him?) race this P1, before he jumped back to P2 racing. P2: Nothing new to report here, other than Max was STILL not happy, and we learned that RB's Yuki Tsunoda, originally from Japan, now lives only 15 minutes away from the Imola track. I suspect it was "party at Chef Yuki's house" this race week! For the record, Ferrari, which came into this race with major upgrades to their cars, saw Charles LaClerc have the best lap times for both practices! P3: Not much happened in this final 60 minute P3, until the 35 minute mark, when a red flag came out as Aston-Martin's Fernando Alonso smashed into a wall, as his rear swung wide and carried his car into the wall- Fernando is ok, car not too bad, but work to be done. Red flag lifted at the 27 minute mark. At the 5:47 minute mark, when drivers are out on their final laps for fastest time, Red Bull's Sergio Perez lightly spins and crashes into the wall at turn 15 causing a red flag to be waved, and effectively ending this P3 session. Nope...car removed and there was two minutes left! Perez is okay, btw. So we have McLaren's Oscar Piastri fastest lap, and Lando Norris made the most of of those two minutes to have McLaren take 2nd, and the 2 Ferrari's, Sainz and LeClerc 3rd and 4th place.
Eye Candy time- Nico Hulkenberg sporting the shades!
GP Quali time!
A note on how Qualifying works: There are three quick races to determine grid position for the GP on Saturday. First quali the last five drivers are cut, second quali again, last five drivers dropped, and 3rd and final quali determines the top ten on the grid and the ever important pole (1st) position. This also applies to the Sprint Qualis, you will just see me use SQ1 to show the difference.
Quali 1: Both Alonso and Perez and their cars were ready to race after the two hour break for the first of Q1 18 minutes. Not too much to report other than the bottom five, and hence these drivers start in the back of tomorrow GP grid. Those drivers/teams are: Bottas/Sauber, Sargent/Williams, Zhou/Sauber, Magnussen/Haas, and shockingly, starting in 20th tomorrow, Alonso/Aston Martin.
Quali 2: 15 minutes. No incidents, so lets get to the next bottom five with the first one being a surprise: Perez/Reb Bull, Ocon/Alpine, Stroll/Aston-Martin, Albon/Williams and Gasly/Alpine. Quali 3: For the top ten grid placement and pole position in 10 minutes. No incidents, so lets get to our top ten grid, which finds Max Verstappen, who has been complaining all weekend about his car, flying into pole position for Red Bull. the McClaren's Piastri and Norris take 2nd and 3rd, with the Ferrari's LeClerc and Sainz taking 4th and 5th, George Russell of Mercedes 6th, Tsunoda of RB at 7th, Hamilton of Mercedes 8th, Riccardo of RB 9th and Hulkenberg of Haas 10th. We are set for Sunday's GP!
Breaking: The race stewards have found that Piastri did impede Hulkenberg in Q1, and penalized him, so Piastri drops from 2nd to 5th on the grid Sunday. :(
Imola Grand Prix Sunday! It was humid muggy, and sunny for this 63 lap race.Lets dig in to what happened, as in the last few laps, we actually got a race to the checkered flag!
It was a clean LIGHTS OUT at the start of the race, with Verstappen and Norris cruising in the 1st and 2nd place for at least 20 laps. William's Alex Albon pit stop was a bad stop, as he left the pit (the longest pit lane on the circuit at about 30 seconds from in to out WITHOUT a pit crew problem!), with a wobbly front right tire, and was fined a 10 second penalty, and after being one LAP behind all the other racers, the team decided to retire the car (DNF). This track is hard to do overtakes (passing another racer), but there were a few, and with the mandatory pit stop, strategy was definitely in play as to WHEN to take that pit-stop based on where you were placing on the track. Teams were testing how long their medium tyres could take how many laps before pitting and changing over to the hard as this track rewards strong grip, and would tear up the fast but soft tyres, which were hardly used. Ferrari's Sainz and McLaren's Piastri had the most fascinating racing in the 5th/6th position, but eventually Oscar was able to overtake Carlos to move up. Carlos fellow Ferrari teammate did challenge McLaren's Norris, but Lando's well-timed pit stop enabled Lando to pull away from LeClerc and race behind our leader, Max Verstappen, who at this point had a six second lead on Norris. Then something wild happened. In the last ten laps of the race,Max's Red Bull car was slowing down, and his battery charge was below 30%, Lando, who many race experts said Lando managed his tyres and pace beautifully in the last half of the race, was now within 2-3 seconds of Max, with 10 laps to go! Fans definitely got to see a race, as we got closer to the final lap, Lando was within one second of Max, and could have WON this race if there was ONE more lap left, but alas, Max beat Lando by .725th of a second! Just one. more. lap. Lando needed to have back-to-back wins in F1 Grand Prix.
Lando got the Driver of the Day vote from the fans, while Mercedes George Russell got fastest lap time. Here is your top 10 who scored points for their team, bottom 10 no points. I should mention that while he did not win the race, the very, very Ferrari crowd went wild when LeClerc took the 3rd place podium!
That's a wrap for Imola, and now we/I turn our attention to the most famous Formula One GP in the world- the Monaco Grand Prix- I've never seen it, so I'm beyond excited to watch it! ABC will air it next Sunday at 6am PST time. 9amEST time.
A quick video recap thanks to the folks at TSN:
Ya made it this far, I'm going to double the eye candy with Nico!
Love a man who takes care of his car!
Yachting time for Nico! Nice ink!
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