The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix could be decided as the field roars into Turn 1 this afternoon, with track position vital for victory at Imola.
The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix could be decided as the field roars into Turn 1 this afternoon, with track position vital for victory at Imola today.
The winner is likely to come from the first two rows, with Oscar Piastri seeking a fourth victory in a row. But expect Max Verstappen to flex his muscles and give it everything he has to make life tough for the McLaren driver, including a big attack into Turn 1 when the lights go out.
Verstappen will not be shy to give it a big lunge, because the #1 Red Bull leading out of Tamburello would make it a contest. In contrast, if Piastri gets through that tricky complex ahead, he might disappear into the distance. And Max knows this. Smart money is on one of the two front-row lads doing the business today.
Behind them, Lando Norris will feel out of position and wants to make amends. However, his post-qualifying demeanour was not that of a driver determined to bounce back after flopping on Saturday when it mattered, but rather a defeated one, even before today’s race. He badly needs a win, not only to sort out his head, but to keep this title race alive.
Only Norris or Piastri will be F1 World Champion this year, unless McLaren drops the ball massively.
Alonso back in the hunt at Imola!
George Russell leads the Mercedes charge from P4 and will fancy his chances of causing an upset. The best way forward for him is to bide his time as Oscar and Max slug it out for the early lead. Mercedes have yet to win a race this year, but if the stars align, this could be their day.
Row three is an all-Spanish affair with Fernando Alonso relishing the added performance bolted onto the Aston Martin with the new upgrades, which Editor Jad Mallak describes as a fully reworked B-spec car. Give the 43-year-old veteran a sniff of the podium, and he will be there.
How Alonso fares today from P5 on the grid will be one of the highlights of the race. He has yet to score a point this season. Today that should change.
Next to him in P6, fellow countryman Carlos Sainz has found the form that eluded him in his first races as a Williams driver. Now that the Spaniard is getting a handle on his new ride, he is delivering, outqualifying his teammate again, and it gets sweeter.
The fact that Sainz topped the timing screens at the end of Q2, while both drivers from his former Ferrari team were eliminated, was karma at work, the kind of twist you simply cannot script. Whether the Williams qualifying pace will translate to race pace remains to be seen this afternoon at Imola.
Hadjar continues to impress as best placed rookie
Next up, Alex Albon heads up row four with Lance Stroll next to him. Both will be looking for a decent points haul. Starting behind their teammates but still inside the top ten, points are there for the pair like low-hanging fruit.
Racing Bulls rookie Isack Hadjar continues to impress. Starting from P9, he is the second-best Red Bull-backed driver on today’s grid, only Verstappen outqualified him. The Frenchman is making a case for himself to be the next driver thrust into the senior team, as they struggle to fill the seat with someone who can drive the RB21 without hurting himself or breaking it, as Yuki Tsunoda did in qualifying on Saturday.
Pierre Gasly rounds out the top ten in the Alpine, the Frenchman showing good pace all weekend for the troubled team. He has the speed and, of course, the experience to move up the order, or at least bag a point, if he can keep ahead of the Ferrari duo starting behind him.
Yes, neither Charles Leclerc nor Lewis Hamilton made it into Q3. A dismal day for Ferrari, flopping massively in front of the Tifosi gathered on home soil to worship the Reds, only to leave disappointed. Their drivers starting from P11 and P12, respectively, are hardly an inspiration for the fans descending on hallowed ground today. Only a safety car or two, rain, or similar anomalies will turn Imola red for the Scuderia.
Antonelli needs less hype and more focus
Behind the Ferrari duo, from P13, Italy’s newest Formula 1 fad, Kimi Antonelli, will be looking to make amends for a poor qualifying session in his first home Grand Prix. Maybe F1’s latest prodigy deserves more protection from the exposure that Mercedes are flinging at him. Perhaps the documentaries, Kimi-dolls, classmates at the races and all the other non-racing frills should be eliminated from the 18-year-old’s plate so he can focus on what he does best, being a racing driver, not a blow-up promotional doll.
Starting from P14 and making it an all-rookie row seven, Gabriel Bortoleto was again faster than his veteran journeyman teammate. But the Sauber has proved to be a brick of a car, and the Brazilian will be hard-pressed to stay where he is, let alone move up the order by the end of the afternoon.
Karma was busy at Imola on Saturday. Franco Colapinto did the unimaginable by crashing out in qualifying, despite setting a reasonable lap time that saw him edge into Q2, only to slam into the wall. A clear reminder that the lack of F1 testing, especially for rookies, is almost criminal.
How can testing be more expensive than the cost of all the cars this year’s rookies and newcomers to teams have broken along the way? How do the patrons of this potentially deadly sport condone a rookie driver getting into an ultra-complex car he has never tested in anger? The lack of meaningful testing in modern Formula 1 is a crime, and one day it will come back and bite hard. Karma can be a bitch.
Lawson under pressure, Tsunoda on the ropes
Another one who would have benefited from more testing is Liam Lawson, who starts today’s race from P16. The New Zealander has been a disappointment all season. Failing as a Red Bull driver, he is being trounced by Hadjar to the point that Helmut Marko is already talking up possible replacements. The Kiwi needs a big result, sooner rather than later, before he is replaced.
Row nine is headed by Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg, with fellow journeyman Esteban Ocon in the Haas next to him. Not much to say about these two blokes, except ask the question, why are they still in Formula 1 after all these years?
In the other Haas, if Ollie Bearman is the real deal that he seems to be, then he better start owning Hulkenberg, because the benchmark in Formula 1, meaning Verstappen and Piastri, is far higher than the podiumless German.
Finally, from P20 and last on the grid, we have Yuki Tsunoda, simply out of his league in the Red Bull. While his team reported that he was improving, he proved that hype was nonsense when he crashed heavily in Q1, trying to set times nowhere near what Max was able to extract from the undrivable number two Red Bull. What’s becoming clear is that Yuki is not their guy, but let’s see how he fares today after that scary crash.
Stepping away from the grid, it does not take Nostradamus to predict that today’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix will be a race of high attrition. History shows the probability of a safety car is around 30%, and who knows what the weather will do.
Hence, expect the unexpected in today’s race, where the stage is set for another epic. Be safe, boys.
Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix Formula 1 Facts & Stats by Reuters
- Round 7 of the 24-race 2025 Formula 1 World Championship
- Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari at Imola
- Lap distance: 4.909km. Total distance: 309.049km (63 laps)
- 2024 pole position: Max Verstappen (Netherlands) Red Bull one minute, 14.746 seconds
- 2024 winner: Verstappen
- Race lap record: Lewis Hamilton (Britain) Mercedes 1:15.484 (2020)
- Start time: 1300 GMT (1500 local)
Imola Circuit
- The race at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari is named after the surrounding region. It has previously been the Italian Grand Prix and San Marino Grand Prix. This will be the fourth Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
- Anti-clockwise Imola hosted the 1980 Italian Grand Prix and was home to the San Marino Grand Prix from 1981 until 2006, when seven-times world champion Michael Schumacher won for a record seventh time.
- Sunday will be the 32nd F1 world championship race held at the circuit.
- Brazilian triple world champion Ayrton Senna and Austrian Roland Ratzenberger died in accidents over the 1994 race weekend.
- Hamilton (2020), Verstappen (2021, 2022, 2024) and Fernando Alonso (2005) are the only current drivers to have won at Imola. Verstappen has won three of the four races held at Imola since 2020.
- McLaren last won at Imola with David Coulthard in 1998.
- In the 31 races to date at Imola, 11 have been won from pole. Another nine winners have come from second on the starting grid. No winner has started lower than fifth.
- Senna still holds the record for most poles at Imola, eight in total.
- The 2023 edition of the race was cancelled due to flooding that devastated the region.
2025 F1 World Championship
- McLaren's Oscar Piastri leads the drivers' championship by 16 points from teammate Lando Norris. Verstappen is 32 points behind Piastri.
- Leaders and champions McLaren are 105 points clear of Mercedes and 141 ahead of Red Bull.
- Piastri has won four of the last five races and is chasing his fourth victory in a row after Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Miami. Norris and Verstappen have each won once this year.
- Seven-times world champion Hamilton has a record 105 career victories from 362 starts.
- Verstappen has won 64 grands prix and is third on the all-time list after Michael Schumacher on 91.
- Norris, Piastri (three) and Verstappen (three) have been on pole so far this season.
- Verstappen is chasing his third pole in a row and fourth in five races.
- Hamilton has a record 104 career poles, his most recent in Hungary in 2023.
Rookies & Milestone
- Three of the six drivers starting a season for the first time have scored so far -- Kimi Antonelli for Mercedes, Oliver Bearman for Haas and Racing Bulls' Isack Hadjar.
- Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber) and Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) have yet to open their accounts.
- They are joined this weekend by Franco Colapinto at Renault-owned Alpine, the Argentine replacing Australian Jack Doohan for at least the next five races.
- Imola is Antonelli's home debut.
- Hamilton's first race in Italy for Ferrari since he joined in January.
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