An always super-fast McLaren and another great turnaround from Red Bull overnight allowed a classic Formula 1 pole contest between Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen at Imola, decided in the former’s favour by the margin of three hundredths of a second.
Yes there was a tyre conundrum bubbling along, always threatening to create a shock result, given how the C5 medium turned out to be probably a faster tyre than the C6 soft.
The increased track grip and bigger power unit modes probably just pushed the C6 past its peak compared to yesterday. But committing to the C5 would have been a risk - given how it would mean one less set available for the race, when it will be needed. Teams are only allocated three sets of mediums for the weekend (plus one set of hards and eight softs).
Only Aston Martin - with nothing to lose and a lot to gain potentially - went into qualifying with two sets of C5s available. Everyone else had one - which will definitely be needed if, as expected, it’s a one-stop medium/hard race.
McLaren and Red Bull’s Verstappen all felt they were quick enough not to need to take that risk, that even if a Mercedes or Ferrari, say, put on the mediums, they’d still be ahead. Turns out they were right. But only just.
For his final run George Russell had a set of mediums fitted to his Mercedes. He qualified third, only 0.1s behind polesitter Oscar Piastri. This despite losing around the same amount of time to traffic at the start of his lap.
Pole probably was achievable for a slightly lesser car on the C5 given that the McLarens and Verstappen stayed with the C6 - and still Russell outqualified Lando Norris’ McLaren.
But in a disastrously uncompetitive weekend for Ferrari on its home ground, all the C5 medium might have done was get it into Q3. Which on the C6s it failed to do, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton leaving the tifosi distraught with P11 and P12 respectively.
The Red Bull was, as usual, at its best in the fast corners. Which means sector 1 at Imola. Verstappen was always faster than the McLarens through there as he exploited that big aero grip but there’d be tyre price to pay on the delicate C6 later in the lap - and so it proved. The exchange was only three-hundredths short and it didn’t escape his attention that pole might’ve been there for there for the taking if they’d switched to the C5.
“We did look at it,” confirmed Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. “Max was more comfortable with the car on that tyre in FP3. We decided to see where we were after the first runs.”
Where he was was at that point was P1, half a tenth faster than Piastri. Realising that McLaren was unlikely to compromise its race chances and given that great first Q3 lap, Verstappen and the team had the confidence to stay with the C6.
That three-hundredths difference between them on the final laps was just the end number of much bigger swings through the lap. At the start of the lap the Red Bull was quicker down the straights and into the fast sweeps, but the McLaren had better traction out of them.
As they get to Tosa, Verstappen is ahead by a handy 0.175s. But then the McLaren’s better use of the rear tyres - one of its core strengths - begins clawing that back. They are absolutely level over the lap as they exit Acque Minerali before Verstappen then pulls out 0.08s down the run from there to the Variante Alta chicane at which point the McLaren regains that.
The final pole-deciding flourish was the McLaren’s better traction out of the final corner.
Piastri was briefly concerned that the four cars going slowly through the Rivazzas at the end of their prep laps were going to deny him pole, but they all got out of his way. Being Piastri, he stayed steely calm. “I must praise his cold blood,” said his admiring team boss Andrea Stella.
“If those cars had lost me pole I was gonna lose my s***,” said the polesitter, of a prospect no one can quite imagine. “It was very tight today and the tyres were tricky. We’ve been trying a few different things, and thankfully it all worked out.”
Regarding why the C6 was so much more marginal than had been apparent in Friday practice, Piastri’s take sounded very feasible. “We’re just pushing more than yesterday, with modes and such. When you started to push further the tyre started to give up.”
Norris just wasn’t quite as confident, was a little slower over most of the lap and made no improvement on his final run, ending up almost 0.3s shy of his team mate. “Just not quick enough,” he accepted. “It’s a regular thing and I need to work on it.”
So we had got our great game theory festival we’d looked forward to. McLaren was confident in its choices and was going to stick to its guns regardless. That attitude was of course borne of its underlying performance. Red Bull thought about doing the opposing strategy - but reasoned that it was too fast to need to make a gamble.
Mercedes felt it probably wasn’t fast enough to challenge for pole on merit and planned right from the start to do the final Q3 run on its sole remaining set of C5 mediums.
“I had to slow to a crawl to give myself space to [Carlos] Sainz,” explained Russell about the start of his lap, “and I only made it across the line with two seconds to spare. That spoiled my run onto the beginning of the lap and we can see it cost me a tenth.”
Watching the onboards, it can be seen how much consistent the Mercedes is on the C5 than the C6-shod cars.
“My first Q3 lap, on the softs, I made a bit of a mistake on. Just short-shifted out of Turn 12 and bogged down. If it wasn’t for that I’d have been P3. So I think I’ve just ended up where I would have been,” added Russell.
Only one Mercedes made it as far as Q3, Kimi Antonelli only 13th, half a second adrift of Russell, just not putting the lap together on a very tricky tyre.
But that was as nothing to the debacle of Ferrari going out in Q2 at this of all places. “Oh my God,” Leclerc kept repeating. As usual, the Ferrari badly lacked downforce.
“Honestly, I don’t even know any more,” said the distraught Leclerc. “It’s just performance. We can do whatever we like with the balance, but the performance isn’t good enough. The race pace is quite strong but on this track overtaking is very difficult and we knew how crucial qualifying was going to be and we didn’t do the job… On a technical track like this everything has to be perfect.”
He was even dubious about the suggestion that using the C5 might have made the difference. Lewis Hamilton echoed Leclerc’s thoughts about the 'OK' balance, “but we just didn’t have the grip we needed”.
As in Miami, Ferrari's drivers were not finding laptime in the switch from used tyres to new. “The tyre situation was strange for everyone today,” said Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur, “but it seemed to affect us more than others.” The Ferrari rear-end update cannot come soon enough.
It’s one thing Ferrari being slower than McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes - but acutely embarrassing for the team to be lining up in its own neighbourhood also behind Aston Martin, Williams, Racing Bull and Alpine. It was the eighth-fastest of the 10 cars.
Sure, there was probably some medium-tyred Aston Martin gamble in that mix. But the Aston had also received a very significant upgrade, so maybe Fernando Alonso’s P5 and Lance Stroll’s P8 was about more than just tyres.
The Williams was 0.8s off the front but that was enough for Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon to go sixth and seventh and comfortably clear of Isack Hadjar’s Racing Bull and Pierre Gasly’s Alpine.
This was in all likelihood the last time F1 cars will qualify around this beautiful and historic track for the foreseeable future. But it’s probably time. These cars are just a little too fast for the surroundings, as the heavy accidents of Yuki Tsunoda and Franco Colapinto demonstrated.
