The first day of running at Imola gave little reason to believe the competitive order has changed significantly among the leading teams.
McLaren may have been comfortably ahead of Red Bull over a single flying lap, but the championship leaders have tended to reveal more of their car’s pace on Fridays than their rivals.
In this, the first of three consecutive races where grid position is especially crucial, Max Verstappen’s knack for pulling together a superb qualifying lap will be especially vital. But Pirelli’s introduction of its much softer C6 tyre may complicate the picture in Saturday’s decisive qualifying session.
Teams’ 2024 performance in context
Last year’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix was the first race where McLaren demonstrated the potential of their upgraded car. Both their drivers qualified within a tenth of a second of Max Verstappen, although Oscar Piastri lost his front row start after being penalised for impeding.
Verstappen’s bid for pole was aided by a timely tow from Nico Hulkenberg. The fight for pole position could well be influenced by who benefits from a slipstream on the run to the start/finish line.
It’s typical for Red Bull to keep more of their pace in hand on Friday, so it’s little surprise to see they are further from their 2024 lap time than any team so far. Similarly, Verstappen has averaged eight tenths of a second quicker than Yuki Tsunoda so far this year, so it’s hard to take the sub-one-tenth gap between them from second practice at face value.
Teams’ 2024 and 2025 times
Last year Red Bull found half a second more than McLaren between second practice and qualifying. That sort of gain would put them right in the mix for pole position, which is exactly where they’ve been in recent races.
Verstappen, however, played down his chances of taking his fourth pole position this year. “We tried a lot of bits, some worked a bit better than others, but overall we’re not fast enough at the moment,” he said. “We definitely need a bit more work to just get better through-corner balance to go faster.”
Pirelli’s new C6 tyre was developed to offer an extra-soft option for street tracks where grip levels are low. As some drivers have acknowledged, it’s not well suited to a track with as many high-speed corners as Imola.
The soft tyres aren’t suited to Imola
The key question for qualifying will be whether any team thinks they can coax a better lap time out of the medium rubber. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was among those who suggested it might appear in qualifying.
However as Nico Hulkenberg pointed out, teams may be reluctant to use tyres they need for the race, when the soft tyre is extremely unlikely to appear.
“I think it’s alright over one lap,” said the Sauber driver. “I saw, though, I think Fernando did his fastest on the medium, which was last year’s softest, so I think it’s going to be maybe interesting if people do something different.
“But, tyre allocation-wise, there’s actually not that much opportunity.”
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