Red Bull Motorsports
F1
F1 to 10: Max Verstappen holds on to extend Emilia-Romagna run
Oracle Red Bull Racing’s reigning world champion Max Verstappen was under siege in the latter stages at Imola, but didn’t blink to win for the third time running at the iconic Italian circuit.
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1. Emilia-Romagna in exactly 75 words*
Max Verstappen took victory in the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix for the third consecutive time, Oracle Red Bull Racing’s reigning world champion bouncing back after the disappointment of the Miami Grand Prix slipping through his fingers to take his fifth win of the Formula One season. Lando Norris (McLaren) and Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) rounded out the Imola podium, the top three finishing where they started, while Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Pérez recovered to eighth after qualifying 11th.
* 2024 is the 75th season of the F1 world championship
2. The Emilia-Romagna GP in six pics
Verstappen's 59th win was close - and worth a big celebration
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
The world champion aced the start from pole, and cleared away
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Norris loomed ever-larger for Verstappen as the laps ticked down
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Verstappen matched Ayrton Senna's record with his eighth straight pole
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
3. Verstappen does it tough to take triple
Verstappen made it a hat-trick of wins at the picturesque track
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Verstappen came to Imola having led for all but two laps in 2021 and 2022 – the 2023 race was called off at the 11th hour because of flooding in the Emilia-Romagna region. A repeat success looked shaky on Friday when he struggled with car balance with the RB20, which had been extensively updated with an all-new floor, front wing, and revised bodywork around the rear wheels for the seventh round of the season.
A superb qualifying session – he topped all three periods of qualifying, having not led a single practice session coming in. Verstappen took pole for the eighth consecutive race, equalling the great Ayrton Senna’s feat from 1998-99 at the circuit where the Brazilian legend tragically lost his life 30 years ago.
The Dutchman took the lead from pole and never looked threatened until the final 10 laps, where Norris broke free from Leclerc behind him and attacked relentlessly as the laps ticked down. A 2.6s lead was hacked to 0.7s by the final lap, but Verstappen had enough in reserve to extend his championship advantage to 48 points.
Team-mate Pérez, meanwhile, was always fighting a rearguard action after Saturday went awry. The Mexican crashing in final practice and missing the top 10 in qualifying by 0.015s, failing to make Q3 for the first time all season.
Pérez started the 63-lap race on the hard Pirelli tyre in a bid to run a longer opening stint and gain track position over his medium-shod rivals when they pitted, a ploy to make ground at a circuit where passing is notoriously tricky.
The strategy paid off to a degree – he finished in the points but 54.776s behind Verstappen – and Pérez’s lowest-scoring weekend of the year saw him relinquish second to Leclerc in the drivers’ standings.
4. Tsunoda makes his point for RB
Tsunoda's weekend-long pace was rewarded with another point
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
For where Visa Cash App RB team-mates Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo started – seventh and ninth, respectively – a solitary world championship point for 10th (Tsunoda) could be viewed as underachieving. But with F1 in 2024 being very much a case of a 10-team grid split into two distinct halves, scoring at all in that second group is meritorious, and Tsunoda showed the way.
The Japanese driver qualified a season-best seventh – a mild disappointment given he’d ended Friday practice in third on the timesheets – and a tardy start immediately dropped him to ninth and gave him more overtaking to do than he’d wanted. But Tsunoda dug deep and was rewarded with a point for his fourth top-10 result of the season.
Ricciardo, after making Q3 for the first time this season and keeping up his record of qualifying inside the top 10 on all four visits to Imola, paid the price for his own slow getaway, passed by Nico Hulkenberg (Haas) and Pérez before the field made it to the first corner. Points were always going to be tough from there, and losing a place to Hulkenberg’s team-mate Kevin Magnussen on the final lap saw him end up 13th.
5. The number you need to know
104: Verstappen’s 104th F1 podium saw him surpass Kimi Raikkonen for sixth on the all-time podium list.
6. The word from the paddock
The last 10-15 laps, I had no grip any more and I was really sliding a lot. I couldn’t afford to make too many mistakes. From where we started the weekend, we can be incredibly pleased with a pole and a win
7. The stats that matter
Drivers' Championship top 5
Position
Driver
Team
Points
Gap
1
Max Verstappen
Oracle Red Bull Racing
161
-
2
Charles Leclerc
Ferrari
113
-48
3
Sergio Pérez
Oracle Red Bull Racing
107
-54
4
Lando Norris
McLaren
101
-60
5
Carlos Sainz
Ferrari
93
-68
Constructors' Championship top 5
Position
Team
Points
Gap
1
Oracle Red Bull Racing
268
-
2
Ferrari
212
-56
3
McLaren
154
-114
4
Mercedes
79
-189
5
Aston Martin
44
-224
8. Away from the track
We write ‘away from the track’, but what our fingers should have typed is ‘around what happens on track’, which is where we join Max Verstappen, Sergio Pérez and Oracle Red Bull Racing in the latest instalment of Behind The Charge at the Miami GP.
Checo tunes up his golf game with Gabriella DeGasperis (better known as @gabbygolfgirl), there’s miniature speedboat races in the pool at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel (with varying opinions of who won), the team’s reaction to the news Adrian Newey is set to depart and a behind the scenes look at the ‘Women Who Rokt’ event as F1 Academy also took to the track in Florida.
Oh, and there’s a sprint race and Grand Prix to follow from inside the garage, too. Watch the video below to get the Miami lowdown.
10 min
Behind The Charge: Back To Miami
It is almost a seven-day week full of partner activations, filming and meet and greets for Max, Checo and the rest of the Team.
9. Where to next, and what do I need to know?
Round 8 (Monaco), May 24-26
Circuit name/location: Circuit de Monaco, Monte Carlo
Length/laps: 3.337km, 78 laps
Grands Prix held/debut: 69, 1950
Most successful driver: Ayrton Senna (six wins)
Most successful team: McLaren (15 wins)
2023 race recap: 1st: Max Verstappen (Oracle Red Bull Racing), 2nd: Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), 3rd: Esteban Ocon (Alpine)
10. Inside the wide world of Red Bull Motorsports
Hakim Danish leads a gaggle of raiders during the opening round of 2024
© Gold & Goose/Red Bull Content Pool
Johann Zarco, Brad Binder, Joan Mir, Jorge Martin, Pedro Acosta… they’re all names we’re accustomed to seeing towards the front in MotoGP™ these days, but they all cut their teeth in the Red Bull Rookies Cup, which has been a stepping stone to the world championship since its inception in 2007.
The idea behind the creation of Red Bull Rookies Cup was simple, and critical for the world’s young racers to put themselves in the shop window for bigger things. A series for up-and-coming riders aged between 14 and 18, running on the European rounds of the MotoGP™ series and a pipeline for Moto3 and the steps beyond – it was a winner then, and equally so in 2024.
Get the lowdown right here on the world champions who came through the Rookies Cup ranks, who can take part and how to get there, and the seven-round 2024 season set to play out.
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