Max Verstappen had to fight to keep Lando Norris at bay in the dying laps as he returned to winning ways in Imola.
The start of the race was very clean and without much incident. Most drivers held position, though Hulkenberg and Hamilton were both able to gain at Tsunoda’s expense. Lando Norris got a pretty equal launch to Max Verstappen, though the second phase of acceleration allowed the reigning world champion to maintain the lead.
The early parts of the race saw little in the way of action, as the track is one that is difficult to overtake at. Some drivers opted to come into the pits early, including Gasly, the only driver on the softs, and Ricciardo, who looked to gain some clean air after falling back a little at the start.
One driver who also stopped early was Alex Albon, though there was some trouble with his pitstop as he was immediately slow in the immediate aftermath. He came in one lap later to change his tyres once again, fixing the issue but leaving him stranded to last place. He would later be given a 10 second penalty for being released to the track in an unsafe manner.
Oscar Piastri had found himself at the back of a DRS train early on in this race behind the two Ferraris, having been handed a 3 place grid penalty following yesterday’s qualifying session for impeding Kevin Magnussen. Whilst the McLaren had exhibited some strong pace so far in this race, it wasn’t enough at this point for Piastri to get past.
With its tight and twisty nature, the track was still catching some drivers out on race day. Sergio Perez took to the gravel on lap 18 after locking up his brakes going into Rivazza 1, and Hamilton would later end up locking up on the exit of Aqua Minerali.
Lando Norris would make his only pitstop on lap 24, and would find himself coming out behind Sergio Perez, who was on an alternate strategy having started on the hard compound tyres. He would find himself stuck behind Perez for just a single lap before overtaking into clean air, to the point that when Leclerc came in a couple of laps later, he was unable to make the overcut work in spite of Norris being held up.
Coming back to the fight between Piastri and Sainz, the McLaren driver had pit only one lap after Norris had done so, and in turn was able to gain enough of an undercut to jump Sainz in the pitlane. Piastri would then go on to start challenging for Leclerc’s position, though this would eventually fizzle out.
Norris had began to complain of lacking any real pace in his car after having put on the hard compound tyres, with Leclerc beginning to gradually make in roads on their gap. However, Norris was being ensured by his race engineer that those behind him were using up a lot more of their tyres than him.
Leclerc had became an ever increasing presence in Norris’ race, managing to get within 1 second in order to gain DRS from the McLaren. However, Leclerc would go on to overshoot the Variante Alta chicane, and drop back out of DRS range on lap 48, and was not really able to challenge for 2nd place after that.
Whilst Norris had previously been concerning himself with maintaining 2nd place from any threats behind, he would eventually be given the go ahead to start pushing and chase Verstappen for the win. What had once been a 7 second gap, was reduced to 2.5 seconds by lap 55, and was continuing to decrease.
However, it looked as though Norris had used up too much of his tyres in his pursuit of Verstappen, having began to level out in terms of pace by the time he got 1.5 seconds behind. Norris would still try, although he would fall awfully short of gaining back to back victories. In the end, Norris would finish 7 tenths behind Verstappen.
