As we came from a nail biting season opener in Bahrain. With RedBull and reigning world champions Mercedes battling it out from Race 1 and being extremely close to each other in terms of pace, both in quail and race.
Officially named as,
Formula 1 Pirelli Gran Premio Del Made In Italy E Dell’emilia Romagna 2021
The venue made a return to the F1 calendar to help during the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Fondly remembered as the ‘San Marino GP’. With a circuit length of 4.9km. It offers a lot of history and amazing opportunities for racing.
RACE
The track was wet at the start. With the rain in the region pouring over the track. All the running in the practice sessions was put to the side, as drivers tried to gauge the driving conditions. Teams ran through the various options to setup the car and race strategy. A partially wet quali session meant the teams had limited but crucial performance data to plan ahead. Charles Leclerc stepped over the limits as he tried to warm up the car up on the formation laps, no damage done but some info gathered about his Ferrari in that condition.
The race started tentatively in the wet conditions, as everyone got up to speed in the conditions. Both the Red Bulls mugged Hamilton into Turn1. As Hamilton tried to keep with the Bulls, he got forced wide and over the sausage kerbs. Taking damage on his car and losing an endplate on his front wing. However the wet conditions meant that the performance loss was not significant.
As we move our attention to the rest of the field, a thick envelope of spray limits us to follow along on the timing screens. Meanwhile the Wiliams of Latifi got into a spin, as he rejoined the track the poor visibility made Mazepin disappear in the spray. Resulting in contact sending Latifi in the barriers making him the first DNF of the race, Mazepin continued on as only his front left tyre came in contact.
As his teammate saw the Safety Car come out, Mick Schumaker smashed his front wing while weaving on the main straight to get temperature into his tyres. Closing the pitlane due to the debris left at the pit exit. As Mick went around the circuit, he had to go around once more as the pitlane was still closed; taking care not to lose the part of his front wing dangling through a couple of wires. The debris was cleared and the safety car came into the pits. Max dipped into a wet patch sending him into a spin, good for him that Lerclerc slowed down and he recovered quickly.
Max pulled off a controlled restart. Pulling a steady gap from the pack. An exciting fight between Gasly, Norris (who came so close to a front row start in qualifying) and Sainz kept the audience on their toes, as the drivers found grip in the damp conditions and battled hard for the mid-points positions. At this point in time, Valterri Bottas was hanging on the edge of the points places. Starting from P8 the finnish driver was having a difficult weekend till this point.
As the first round of pit stops rolled around, Red Bull pulled the trigger first from the top 2 teams and pulled a clean stop for Verstappen. Hamilton’s tyre change on Lap 28 was a slow 4 second stop (this was before the Technical Directive for pit stops came into effect). As the wet tyres take a few laps to warm up, it took a while for him to start putting in decent lap times. However it wasn’t enough, as it was evident on Lap 31 when Hamilton was lapping Russell at Turn 9 but had to go off the relatively dry racing line. Sending him into a gravel trap, effectively slowing him down just before clipping his front wing at the barrier. By the time Hamilton reversed out of that abrupt stop taking care not to get stuck in the gravel trap, he was a lap down from the Max who was leading the race.
But something else was happening nearby on the main straight. Russell was overtaking an out of place Mercedes of Valtteri in P9 when the rear of the Williams snapped out and crashed heavily into Valtteri. Spewing debris all over the place. Mick and Kimi witnessed the incident happening right in front of them, having to drive straight through the debris. This brought a red flag. Allowing the Merc team to check Lewis’s car and fix the sensor probe with some good old duct tape. Having this presented a golden opportunity for Hamilton to unlap himself and limited damage in the end by resuming in P8
As the race resumed on Lap 35, Max once again took supreme control and took the pack racing again. Norris and Leclerc benefitting from the chaos ahead were in the podium places on pure performance. Norris made good use of the situation and moved into P2 within the first lap from the restart. Tsunoda unfortunately spun while following closely, resulting in his good performance from the weekend reduced by 10 places. Perez suffered a similar fate. The Mexican driving the RB16B for the first time in wet conditions during a race situation and in P14 but adapted well to finish P11 at the end of the race. Just at the cusp of the points.
On lap 60, Hamilton overtook Norris to take P2. The young Brit put up a good defensive drive keeping the 7-time world champion behind for a few laps, until Lewis got into the perfect position using all of his experience and performance from W12 to move up on the second step of the podium.
Max Verstappen finally broke the Italian curse by winning in Imola, the talented driver not being able to finish a single Italian race in the previous season. A comfortable win for the title challenger who drove clinically through the race and managed the tyres well. Resulting in Hamilton finishing 22 second behind with Lando Norris right behind him. The Papaya car gave another career best finish of P3. The track did not dry up significantly, having the cars limited from their full potential. Hamilton also took the fastest lap, putting it clear of the next best lap by Max by around 6 tenths of a second.
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