ItalianGP

2021 Italian GP (Imola)

Another race, more talking points. This season is getting more interesting, and I have chosen my highlights to write about after the 2021 Imola GP.

  • Hamiltons’ Fortune
  • Red Bulls’ Contrasting Races
  • Williams’ Pace
  • Vettels’ Misfortunes
  • The Midfield Order
  • The best, worst, luckiest and unluckiest

Hamiltons’ Fortune

Lewis Hamilton has for the last few years been one of the more “fortunate” drivers on the grid when it comes to incidents and how he profits from them. This still seems to be the case today. While chasing through the backmarkers, trying to get in reach of Verstappen to fight for the lead, he went off the dry line on his slicks when overtaking Russell and lost the car, ending up in the gravel and stopping just before the wall on the outside of turn 7. He seemingly tried to get his rears spinning to get the car pointing in the right direction, but instead went straight on into the wall and broke his front wing after failing to do so. This seemed costly, as he would have to pit and would lose a great bunch of positions. It seemed hope was lost for a podium finish and damage limitation was on.

Instead, just at the right moment, Russell and Bottas came together in a spectacular collision and caused a red flag, effectively acting as a stopgap to Hamiltons’ losses, effectively gifting him a chance to recuperate from a lap down to Verstappen, to starting P8 with a neutralised grid. His overtakes were efficient and clean, and he made quick work of the midfield runners with his W12, showing off the potential of the 2021 Mercedes by picking up the fastest lap on the way. He, therefore, holds on to his championship lead by 1 point, the fastest lap making up the difference between him and Max Verstappen.

Red Bulls’ Contrasting Races

There is no denying that Verstappen is an incredible driver. He was the class of the field today, jumping Hamilton and Perez at the start and never looking back after the first corner, beating Hamilton off track in what I believe is a questionable move considering they were side by side. Either way, he mastered the conditions and absolutely lived up to the hype surrounding the car and driver package Red Bull has fielded this season to bring the car home over 20 seconds ahead of Hamilton. He had a tricky red flag restart after almost losing the car completely, but his brilliant car control prevented him from any embarrassment and at the end of the day it was a race to remember for Verstappen.

Perez, on the other hand, had a race to forget. After his brilliant outing in Bahrain, and having outqualified his teammate to start P2 on the grid, the pressure and expectations to deliver were high. It seems some of it got to him, as he suffered 2 noteworthy mistakes on his way to a largely unimpressive P12 finish. While it is still early in the season and conditions at Imola were very tricky for drivers, a seasoned veteran with so much experience under his belt should stand out under the circumstances. I expect better from him in Portugal.

Williams’ Pace

Williams had an unusually strong outing this weekend, until they stopped racing. It seemed both drivers were very comfortable with the car in qualifying, both putting in great performances got get into Q2, and in Russells’ case, even knocking on the door of Q3 with a lap worthy of P12.

Even in the changing conditions, it seemed Williams was in it to fight for points against supposedly faster rivals. Early on, however, Latifi drifted into Mazepin, taking himself out of the race after recovering from a mistake going into T12. Later on in the race, Russell brought out the red flags after going for an optimistic and very risky move off the racing line on the outside of Bottas’ struggling Mercedes into T1. The resulting crash was spectacular, and thankfully neither of the drivers were hurt. Russell might have thought he had a good shot at a point or 2, however, in Formula 1 and such risky conditions where there is only 1 dry line, it only takes 1 small wrong move to mess up a whole race.

Vettels’ Misfortunes

If one positive can be picked out this weekend for Vettel, it’s that he still remains the only non-Mercedes driver to have led the WDC in the hybrid era. Other than that, it was yet another unspectacular weekend from the German driver. He managed to improve his qualifying pace relative to his teammate, albeit on a shorter track, but in terms of pace he’s still clearly not quite there yet in the mid-midfield battle, only managing P13 and still 2 or 3 tenths off of his new rivals.

His second race with Aston Martin started off as bad as it gets, a brake issue forcing him to start from the pitlane. Vettel is a man of great experience, and in the Red Bull I have no doubt we’d see a repeat of his masterclass in Abu Dhabi 2012. However, in the Aston Martin he struggled to climb the order. Really the only notable moment he had in the race, apart from his retirement towards the end, was the curious decision to go on the medium tyres long before anyone else. It seemed hopeless, as if he or Aston Martin had already given up on the race result and decided to risk everything on the alternative strategy. Of course, it backfired badly. Vettel lost a bunch of time for the first few laps of his stint. Eventually, he did briefly exchange fastest laps with the leaders, but that was shortlived as the rest of his race was plagued by gearbox sync issues, which eventually got worse and led to said retirement.

While people might say he looked more comfortable this weekend and it’s all coming slowly, he really seems hampered by the lack of track position in the tight midfield. If only he had waited for that Red Bull seat…

Can things get any better for Vettel at Aston Martin? How much can they still improve? And how patient is Lawrence Stroll to see results after speaking so highly of him before the season started?

The midfield order

To take anything away from a race in changing conditions is difficult, especially when trying to figure out how the midfield is shaping up. It would seem McLaren, specifically Lando Norris and the Ferraris are the class of the midfield at the moment, however Alpha Tauri is yet to have a clean race, and Aston Martin is seemingly lost at the moment with possibly huge potential (See Mercedes). Danny Ric, Alfa Romeo, Alpine, Aston Martin, Alpha Tauri and George Russell seem to be the contenders for the bigger “mid-midfield“ battle, the upcoming races will paint a clearer picture of who’s where in terms of raw pace and how the teams and drivers are developing and adapting.

I don’t expect Haas to compete for anything this season, nor does Haas. It seemed both Schumacher and Mazepin could keep their noses (Mostly) clear and gather some valuable experience on track. Whether the drivers can make a big enough difference to overcome a 2 lap deficit to the leaders is highly unlikely, but we should be able to see improvements relative to each other. So far, Schumacher seems to have the upper hand in the backmarker battle, which in my eyes includes Latifi as well, despite having a noticeably better car.

The best, worst, luckiest and unluckiest

Best – Verstappen: Brilliant dominating race, no other real stand out performers. Honorable mentions go to Lando Norris/Charles Leclerc.

Worst – Mazepin: Didn’t cause a crash unlike 2 other drivers, but just very unspectacular and finished a mile behind his teammate.

Luckiest – Hamilton: Very fortunate to get out of the gravel trap when he did, and the red flag timing was impeccable, allowing his team to repair the damage to his front wing.

Unluckiest – Vettel: What can a man do to catch a break. Started in the pitlane, got a seemingly randomly timed stop/go penalty a third of the way through the race AFTER pitting and building up heat in the slicks in tough conditions, to then suffer gearbox sync issues and retire just a couple of laps before the end.