After a season-rich start to the season, the Red Bull team turned events into a win-win race in Imola, while their main rivals, Ferrari, failed to realize their potential. Let’s take a look at the stage statistics box to find out what interesting facts are hidden under the weekend that was dominated by Verstapens!
#1 Verstapens reached a maximum of 34 points in Imola (25 for the win, 8 for the sprint and 1 for the fastest lap). In three attempts last year, no one managed to win both in the sprint and later in the race. Only Luis Hamilton managed to score more points in one round – in 2014, in the last stage of the season, Abu Dhabi was awarded double points, so Hamilton’s victory was worth 50 points.
#2 With Verstapen winning from the pole position with the fastest lap, leading the entire race distance, he reached the second Grand Slam of his career, accomplishing the same thing Charles Clecker did two weeks earlier in Australia. The last time two different riders reached the Grand Slam in one season was in 1979when Jacques Lafītis succeeded in Interlagos, and Gil Vilves – in Long Beach.
#3 The Red Bull celebration was made even sweeter by Serhio Peresa’s finish in second place. Since the introduction of hybrid engines in 2014, this was only the second double victory for Red Bull after the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix, when Max Verstapen acknowledged the superiority of his then-teammate Daniel Rikjardo. In this technical era, Mercedes have won 53 doubles, Ferrari has won four, Red Bull has won two and McLaren has won one.
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Graph: Pirelli#4 Lando Norris climbed the podium with the Red Bull riders. For McLaren, the recent F1 race in Italy has been particularly successful. Lando also managed to finish third in Imola last year, while in Monza he and Daniel Rickardo brought a double victory to the team. A year earlier, Carlos Sainc finished second with McLaren in Monza, making the Tuscan Grnad Prix at the Mugello track in 2020 the only 5 stages in Italy where McLaren riders have not reached the podium.
#5 Immediately behind the podium was George Russell, whose fight with Walter Botas in Imola ended much more peacefully this year than a year earlier, when he was also on a dry track, when both teams collided. Russell is the only driver to have been in the top five in all four stages this season.
#6 Russell’s result was a consolation for the Mercedes team after a much-needed performance. For the first time since the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix, Mercedes was unable to enter the Q3 with at least one car. The last time Hamilton started in 14th place, he surprisingly won the 2018 German Grand Prix. This time, for the first time since 2013, the Spanish GP is overtaken in a lap and finishes outside the points.
#7 The F1 fans from Spain turned out to be a particularly unsuccessful weekend. Only two riders will leave, but both were compatriots Fernando Alonso and Carlos Saincs. This season has started very badly for both of them – Alonso has scored only two of the “Alpine” team 22 points after a series of technical problems. Meanwhile Saincs has completed only 1 lap in the last two stages in racing mode. Last year, Saints was the most stable rider in 1294 of the 1297 races. Alonso and Saincs are in the last two places in the race.
#8 The chaotic qualification broke the record of the parties’ 2016 Hungarian GPs and the 2021 Azerbaijani GPs, when the red flags were raised four times in the qualification. The Q1 session first had to be stopped due to an Albon brake explosion. The Saints accident halted the events of Q2. Meanwhile, in the rainy conditions in the Q3 session, Magnussen slipped first, then the exhaust system let down Botas, and finally Noriss slipped. Despite the red flags, Magnussen won 4th place, the Haas team’s best qualifying ever.
#9 Four steps were enough to all ten teams score points. What was last experienced in 2018. However, at that time “Racing Point” took over the team “Force India” in the middle of the season, so the points scored by this unit were not counted within the designers’ cup until the summer break. The year 2009 is worth highlighting in the past. Then the points were awarded only to the Top 8 riders, however, according to the modern counting system, all teams would score in the first two stages.
#10 After this stage, Max Verstapen won more than Kimi Raikonen (22:21). The Red Bull leader also managed to overtake the Finnish athlete in the race lead (1308: 1305). Raikonen still has a lot more pedestals, but Verstapens broke into the top ten with 62 finishes in the Top 3. The Hamilton record (183 pedestals) will be safe for some time to come. Max has won twice in four races this season and has withdrawn twice. Meanwhile, this was his second victory in 3 starts on the Imola track, while the first attempt in 2020 ended in a safety belt with a flat tire. In both Imola and 2022, Verstapen can be referred to as “all or nothing”.
