Imola GP conclusions: Verstappen’s Piastri lesson, McLaren’s fear, Tsunoda’s wobble

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen claimed his second victory of the F1 2025 season in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola.

Verstappen dominated after sensationally snatching the lead at the start with Lando Norris second for McLaren and team-mate Oscar Piastri third. Here are our conclusions from Imola.

Max Verstappen might not retain the title in F1 2025, but he remains the best by some margin

The moment Max Verstappen cemented his status as the best driver in F1 today? Easy.

Mexico 2021: Turn 1, Lap 1.

It was as though the Red Bull’s parachute had failed, the way Verstappen kept on cannoning towards the first corner as the rest, headed by the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, all hit the brakes.

Max was so out of sync with the others that it seemed for faintest moment that his car belonged to a different scene from a different race entirely as he kept going, going, going.

Then he was gone, swinging around the outside of both Mercs and into a race lead he would not relinquish.

It would be some weeks before he was crowned World Champion for the first time – you might have heard about that thing with the Safety Car in Abu Dhabi – yet Mexico was the moment Max confirmed that his was a talent head and shoulders above everyone else out there.

It was the closest thing you can find to someone showboating behind the wheel of a grand prix car – the F1 equivalent of a nutmeg – and short of Romain Grosjean walking out of a ball of fire in Bahrain remains the most breathtaking F1 moment of this decade.

There was a similar feeling as Verstappen overtook Oscar Piastri for the lead at the start of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on Sunday.

The stakes were not as high on this occasion, true, yet once again you were left with the impression that only Max would be capable of something like that.

Actually, scratch that: nobody else would even think of something like that.

That’s the thing about great overtakes, you see, for as much as they might require great skill and feel, they are in essence an expression of a driver’s personality.

How many other drivers in history would even sense that opportunity? And how many of those would have the balls to risk it?

There you will find the true difference between Max and the rest.

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And it isn’t just about talent and courage and confidence either, for a great deal of thought goes into a move of that nature.

F1’s dirty-air problem has become a theme of the early races of this year, the last of the current rules cycle as the downforce levels reach an upper ceiling and drivers complain of the limiting effect of being in the wake of the car ahead.

Why, for instance, has Charles Leclerc been so vocal about the need for Ferrari to urgently improve their qualifying form?

Beyond the obvious, it is that starting closer to the front – having fewer cars ahead of him – will leave the car less constrained by turbulent air, thereby allowing Leclerc to access more consistently the underlying pace of the Ferrari in racing conditions.

Like Japan and Jeddah, Imola’s fast and sweeping corners put an even larger premium on clean air than usual, increasing the importance of Verstappen seizing what was almost certainly the only shot he had of passing Piastri.

Verstappen’s use of clean air at the head of the field was largely responsible for his comfortable advantage on a weekend McLaren once again had the quicker car, but do not overlook also the effect of what appears to be Red Bull’s first successful upgrade package in more than 12 months.

Enough to put Red Bull back in the game? Too early to tell for definite.

Yet now 22 points behind Piastri, he remains close enough to keep McLaren uncomfortable. Which might be all he needs to swing a tense title fight his way.

And even if he is to be dethroned at the end of 2025, the count (surely only temporarily) stopped at four, few would dispute that he remains the best driver in F1 by some margin.

That accolade, at least, is safe for some time yet.

Oscar Piastri won’t let that happen again

There are two ways of looking at Oscar Piastri’s role in Max Verstappen’s move at the first corner.

Either he caught a glimpse of the Red Bull coming around his outside and quickly reasoned that, with a points lead to protect and Max still unlikely to be his main threat for this year’s World Championship, this was a battle he could afford to lose.

Or you can say that Max did to Oscar what Piastri did to Norris at Monza last year, the lead McLaren caught sleeping and duly humbled by a more creative and agile racer.

Either way, knowing what we know about Piastri – self-critical (albeit in a less open way that Norris) and constantly working on his weaknesses – it will irritate him no end that he allowed Verstappen to slip past him so easily.

Especially given the importance of track position and all that simply lovely clean air at Imola.

For all the suggestions from McLaren’s side that the Red Bull was genuinely fast here, if he had just managed to hold the lead through the first corner there was every chance that Piastri would have dominated in the style he did in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Miami.

Much of the talk lately has been of Piastri’s ruthlessness compared to Norris, the most vivid demonstration of which to date came when the McLarens came to pass Verstappen in Miami two weeks ago

Yet here was Max teaching Piastri that there are levels of ruthlessness and that he – Verstappen – is the final boss.

Verstappen’s own brand of ruthlessness and dead-eye opportunism makes the rest look decidedly weak and flat footed by comparison.

It wasn’t just the pass that annoyed Piastri but the McLaren reaction to it too, specifically the decision to pit early into traffic and conspire to make a bad situation worse, the pit wall overcomplicating it and falling into a trap in their efforts to get Verstappen back.

After all the success he’s had over recent weeks, perhaps this – a reminder that he, much like his team, is still far from the finished product – will benefit Piastri over the long term.

After Norris’s cluster of missed wins last season, it is significant that this is the first time Piastri has lost a race he should have won.

Unlike his team-mate, you would expect Oscar to do more, both inside the cockpit himself and by guiding the team strategically, to ensure that it does not become a habit.

The next time Max tries his luck around the outside of a first corner, you can guarantee Piastri will be prepared for it.

McLaren are petrified of team orders deciding the title

Before you criticise McLaren for a lack of decisiveness and another lost win, put yourself in the minds of those on the pit wall.

Would you willingly take points away from Oscar Piastri and give them to Lando Norris, knowing what’s on the line this season?

Or, indeed, take them away from Lando Norris and present them to Oscar Piastri?

That is the uneasy and unenviable situation facing McLaren every single time the topic of team orders raises its head in 2025.

As written in this column after the Japanese Grand Prix, in a season in which McLaren clearly have the fastest car, every decision they take (or don’t take) carries far more weight – and brings considerably more risk – than previous years.

They are not dealing with pieces on a chessboard here, as some would have you believe, but real people with human emotions.

A Formula 1 season does not exist in a bubble, either, and any team orders decision made for the buzz of short-term gain is laced with the danger of bringing far bigger long-term consequences.

Put another way, if either Norris or Piastri lose this year’s title by a narrow margin and are able to pinpoint the precise moment the team told them to give those decisive points to the other guy, McLaren have a serious problem on their hands.

So it is far better to stand back and let nature take its course, allowing the battle between Piastri and Norris to develop organically and without any interference whatsoever.

It is quite a brave stance to take, too, as the two-headed team management of Andrea Stella and Zak Brown willingly put themselves in the line of fire for their perceived inaction on the days victories slip out of McLaren’s hands.

Much like Japan, the closing laps at Imola, as the team refused to order Piastri aside despite Norris’s clear tyre advantage, were yet another clear indication that McLaren are prepared to lose the occasional battle in order to eventually win the war.

When it comes to team orders, they don’t want to know. Don’t want to get involved. And with good reason.

Nobody, after all, will remember the races they lost to Verstappen if at the end of this season one of Piastri or Norris is crowned the team’s first World Champion in almost two decades.

Still McLaren appear to be banking on the inherent pace advantage of the MCL39 telling over the season and Verstappen’s resistance eventually fading to leave a direct contest between their drivers.

To repeat the point from Suzuka, though: it is a brave assumption to make.

Yuki Tsunoda must get over his crash quickly or risk being overwhelmed

Red Bull seem at peace these days with the fact that they will never find a team-mate quick enough to come close to Max Verstappen.

He’s just too good, too advanced, too at one with the team and the car for anyone, be it a talented academy product or an established driver with a track record of success, to match him.

The expectations of the second car have been lowered to such a degree that Yuki Tsunoda’s start to life at Red Bull – four points from his first five races and three very minor Q3 grid slots – has somehow been spun as a success.

And it is. If you happen to be measuring it against what came just before.

But it isn’t. Not really. Not by normal standards.

Red Bull these days seem prepared to put up with the second driver falling in Q2, occasionally even Q1, so long as he otherwise proves steady and competent.

Yet what still gets the alarm bells ringing at Red Bull are what can best be described as the brain-fade moments and the signs that suggest a driver is not thinking straight.

What did it for Sergio Perez in the end?

It wasn’t necessarily the results, otherwise he would not have lasted long beyond his run of five races without a Q3 appearance while driving the most dominant car in F1 history in mid-2023 (and he definitely would have been dropped when Red Bull’s Constructors’ title hopes were fading in 2024).

It was instead moments like his crash on the very first lap of FP1 at the 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix, a result of pushing inordinately hard at such an early stage of the weekend.

See also his penalty for being over the line in his grid box in Mexico last year, another sloppy error that offered an insight into how his standards had slipped as the pressure on him grew.

Oh, and his slow reaction at the start of the sprint race in Qatar, after which Red Bull’s minds were finally made up (Perez was pictured in a very public meeting in the paddock with Christian Horner and Helmut Marko ahead of the main race the following day).

Pierre Gasly, meanwhile, was pretty much driven to insanity by the experience of being Verstappen’s team-mate.

He became so weirdly fixated with specific details in 2019 – trying a wide variety of seats and oddly setting up the car for specific corners rather than the lap as a whole – that Red Bull were left with no option but to discard him halfway through the season.

And as reported by PlanetF1.com earlier this year, Liam Lawson – feeling the need to apologise to anyone and everyone in the team for his poor performance level – was demoted for his own protection after Red Bull noticed a worrying change in his demeanour.

It is why Tsunoda’s explanation for his crash in qualifying at Imola – he told media including PlanetF1.com that he was “ashamed” for pushing “unnecessarily hard” in Q1 – should have Red Bull sitting up and taking notice once more.

It is undeniable that Tsunoda has looked more at home in the RB21 than Lawson ever did in Australia and China.

Yet with the pace apparent only in occasional flashes and the results still not forthcoming, was Yuki drawn into overstretching himself in his increasingly desperate attempts to force a breakthrough at Imola?

That way – overdriving, taking silly risks, pacing yourself poorly through the sessions on a race weekend – disaster lies.

It was at this circuit last year, you’ll recall, that Perez’s season took an irreversible turn, a mistake in final practice swiftly followed by the end of his six-race run of Q3 appearances to start 2024. He soon spiralled as one poor qualifying result suddenly became three in a row.

Tsunoda must get over his crash quickly and ensure that it remains only a brief wobble.

If not, he too risks being overwhelmed.

Alpine won’t see the best of Franco Colapinto in these circumstances

The good news?

Franco Colapinto is exactly the same driver he was at Williams.

The bad news?

Franco Colapinto is exactly the same driver he was at Williams.

If nothing else, his five-month stint on the sidelines represented a rare and golden opportunity for Colapinto to work quietly on the shortcomings in his technique that became so obvious towards the end of his otherwise impressive 2024 cameo.

To soften his inputs and become a more refined racing driver, less reliant on his reflexes and late turn in and more about touch and feel, manipulating the car rather than reacting to whatever it does when he turns the steering wheel and jabs the pedals.

But no.

Not when all manner of sponsors have been flocking to his door since late last year, making him the second highest-profile athlete in Argentina behind Lionel Messi after just nine F1 appearances.

Too much, too soon?

Subject to that sort of adoration, it is little wonder that a young man of 21 only sees the good with no real urge to work on his lingering weaknesses.

The ability to be self-critical and the drive for self-improvement both tend to wane once you become a folk hero overnight and your face starts appearing on every passing billboard.

Hence Colapinto’s mistake in qualifying at Imola, from roughly the same airspace as his two crashes in 24 hours in Brazil and his mighty 50G thump of the wall in Vegas in 2024.

If it has ever once crossed Colapinto’s mind that he has already ‘made it’ in Formula 1, however, he could not be more mistaken.

Not when he has an initial contract of just five races with Alpine, forcing him to prove himself all over again and exerting on him the same pressures to which he clearly did not respond well towards the end of his time with Williams.

All this, of course, can be traced back to Alpine’s mismanagement of their drivers and the mistake – there is no other word for it – of committing to Doohan so early in last year’s driver market.

Once it became clear that Colapinto – promoted to a race seat with Williams just four days after the signing of Doohan was announced at the Dutch Grand Prix – was the driver Alpine (read: Flavio Briatore) really wanted in the car, they should have got the inevitable swap over and done with last winter.

At least that way Colapinto would have had a full pre-season to get up to speed with his new team rather than being plunged into an unfamiliar car “six races behind the others”, as he put it to media including PlanetF1.com at Imola.

In the event, Alpine never saw the best of Doohan, a more capable driver than he looked during his unhappy stint in the seat, who could never shake off the air of a dead man walking after being so publicly undermined by those closest to him.

In these circumstances, they won’t see the best of Colapinto either.

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