“It’s visually hard to register what is happening and to keep up,” said Lando Norris. The driver skill looked more like guiding a missile than driving a car. If you’re familiar with the contours of Acqua Minerale at the bottom of the hill mid-way through the lap, it doesn’t seem feasible that they are going through the first part of that in seventh gear at not much short of 180mph. This was never more true than at the Tamburello left-right-left sequence, fifth gear for what ostensibly looks like a chicane, quickly followed by the Villeneuve chicane – entered in seventh gear with a couple of downchanges for the second part. “They are like fighter planes around here.” “It’s just incredible the speeds we are going through some of these corners,” said Hamilton. The big monster of downforce and power that is a modern hybrid F1 car dwarfed this legendary circuit. MARK HUGHES A REMINDER OF WHAT’S BEEN LOST Slightly smaller, slightly less aero-sensitive cars will work very nicely on them. Like Algarve and Mugello, Imola demands F1 to embrace more challenging track designs. If we have slightly smaller, slightly less aero-sensitive cars they will follow and race more even on a track like this.Īnd if we keep tracks like Imola, we punish drivers for mistakes and make it a real test, not a race around a car park. If we have sensible DRS zones we can give drivers the chance to pass without making it an inevitability. If we have more cars closer together, we can have more close-run affairs like the opening stint. It’s not Imola’s fault that the only reason the leaders were so closely matched is because F1’s got such a baked-in competitive order, or that F1 cars are so big they seemed to dwarf parts of the track. Tamburello’s not a huge stop but at least it allowed a few drivers to be opportunistic, including a pass for second. The drag reduction system was also doing its job for once, not enabling easy drive-by passes but – when a driver got close enough – just about providing enough to let drivers go aggressive into the braking zone. It looked like a proper race at the front with three cars in close proximity, the leader being hounded and strategy coming into play. Until Lewis Hamilton jumped ahead and won at a canter, I was actually enjoying the tense nature of the San Marino- sorry, the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. SCOTT MITCHELL CHALLENGING TRACK DESIGNS DON’T EQUAL BAD RACING So let’s hope F1 sorts out a deal and sorts out the track limits to make this more than a glorious one-off. It’s difficult to know where the money for a regular race will come from, so a continuing stand-in role next year is its best hope, but the value to F1 can be measured by more than cold, hard cash. But the Imola track is in the town and even has private houses within the track!į1’s behind-closed-doors return was a joy. Monza is walled off in a royal park outside Milan and that makes for a beautiful venue. These aren’t stop/start, they are a genuine challenge.īut above all it’s the location that is special. And while many lament the Tamburello and Villeneuve chicanes, they are quick and reward drivers who attack them. It’s not just the lack of runoff and the topography that enlivens this track, but also the imperfect geometry of many of the corners. The circuit itself isn’t great for overtaking but the fact today’s enormous cars have almost outgrown the track makes it all the more challenging. The late call not to allow fans to attend made Imola feel like a ghost town, but to see the tifosi in their natural habitat twice a year is something F1 should aspire to. Modena, birthplace of Ferrari, is only an hour up the road, AlphaTauri is based just a few miles away and the monument to the legendary Ayrton Senna is a reminder that the history is bad as well as good.īut heritage only gets you so far and it’s also a fantastic venue for F1. It’s a part of Italy that’s steeped in motorsport. Grand prix racing belongs at Imola, a circuit that oozes history despite being a relative newcomer compared to Monza and, for all its modernisation and changes over the years, it has an infectious old-world feel. EDD STRAW F1 HAS TO SEE IT BELONGS AT IMOLAįormula 1 was absent from Imola for 14 years, but last weekend it felt like it had never been away. Our writers give their takes on what the track brought to the calendar, and also the elements where it wasn’t ideally compatible with 2020 F1. Imola was the last of the truly old-school additions to the 2020 Formula 1 calendar (Istanbul being a 21st-century track), and driver reaction suggested it was the most popular so far.
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