Red Bull and Max Vestappen again turned around a difficult weekend to see off both McLarens in the only session that really counted, putting the Dutchman back into striking range in the 2025 drivers' title fight.
But is McLaren's Imola defeat - on the heels of three successive Oscar Piastri wins - another blip like Suzuka was, or should it be concerned that it hasn't yet managed to ensure the title battle is a Piastri-and-Norris-only affair?
Perfection required when it's this close
Ben Anderson
This race typified the incredibly tight margins that can make the difference between victory and defeat in this 2025 season so far.
Imola is a fast circuit, clearly better suited to the Red Bull than some other places F1 has visited so far, and overtaking is always difficult, so it should have been all about who claimed pole. Piastri did that job (just), but he didn’t get the second phase of his start right and then allowed himself to be mugged by an audacious Verstappen pass at the first chicane.
That effectively decided the race, almost the reverse of Jeddah - because Verstappen could then use the clean air to help look after his tyres and any end-of-stint edge McLaren might have theoretically enjoyed didn’t ever have a chance to play a role here because the safety cars anyway effectively protected the leading car strategically.
That leading car was Verstappen’s, so he duly won the race - but it could so easily have been Piastri’s, if he’d got the first corner right.
Even on the correct strategy I don’t see how either McLaren finds a way past Verstappen’s Red Bull when the top cars were so evenly matched around this circuit and those safety cars helped neutralise the tyre degradation effect in the lead battle.
Perfection was needed. Verstappen was perfect in this race. Piastri and McLaren weren't.
This means more than Japan
Scott Mitchell-Malm
This was a much more significant win for Verstappen than his last McLaren-defying performance in Japan, because it wasn't just about stealing then protecting track position. As Lando Norris put it: "I don't think we had an answer to them, even in the final stint."
It was the first time this season that Verstappen and Red Bull looked like more than just a match for McLaren in a straight fight. And there will be all sorts of reasons why this was possible after the utter thrashing McLaren dished out at the last race in Miami, but all Verstappen will care about is that it shows his car can be just as good (maybe quicker?) when everything comes together.
For all the positives this season - stealing poles, the Suzuka win, scoring podiums - there's been a massive undercurrent of 'Verstappen's sniping for too much to keep this up all season'. Even his best days needed quite a bit of help. Whereas at Imola, the McLaren slip-ups were useful but not defining: Norris reckons he wouldn't have beaten Verstappen from pole today; Piastri couldn't (his defence was surprisingly non-existent and disappointing); and McLaren didn't run the best race possible but that just contributed to bigger deficits rather than actually being behind.
Of course the race could have played out very differently had Verstappen's "win it or bin it" approach to the first corner (Christian Horner's words) not paid off and Piastri held the lead. But it's not like Verstappen fought a rearguard action at any point after that. Once he was in front, all he did was take more and more control of the grand prix.
It's been a while since we saw Red Bull give him a car capable of doing that so comfortably.
Every rival team should fear a driver like this
Josh Suttill
As long as Verstappen has a car capable of picking up race wins on some weekends, then McLaren can never relax. As, let's be honest, in a straight fight Verstappen has the beating of both its drivers, and that's no slight on either McLaren driver.
Verstappen storming around the outside of Piastri, turning a battle for second with George Russell into a battle for the win with one bit of late braking, is yet another example that Verstappen is fully into his late-1990s Michael Schumacher era.
I say that because, like Schumacher (pictured above en route to victory in Canada in 1997) was for much of the 90s and early 2000s, Verstappen is so clearly the class of the current F1 field - even one that features the most successful driver of all time and huge talents like Piastri, Norris, Russell and Charles Leclerc.
Piastri, who held his own well against Verstappen in Miami and whose racecraft has built up a big bank of credit, was made to look like a rookie by Verstappen at Imola.
McLaren isn't capitalising enough
Valentin Khorounzhiy
Unless the Barcelona flexi-wing adjustment is at true game changer, you'd expect the MCL39 to still be the car to have over the RB21 at the vast majority of the tracks this year. And it is clear Red Bull is performing a true high-wire act here - in both of its wins, Suzuka and here, it righted the ship in-weekend after fairly turgid Fridays.
But the balance of power between F1 cars doesn't remain static, even in a season like this when the spectre of 2026 weighs so heavily. And the feeling was there in Suzuka, and it is equally acute here, that McLaren is letting Verstappen score too much and stay too close given the respective cars' current potential.
Save for Jeddah (where Verstappen really shouldn't have been allowed by McLaren to steal pole anyway), the McLaren pair are losing the 50/50s to Verstappen, and the team - which admittedly has already effectively defended the constructors' title - is at least somewhat limited strategically by the fact it cannot really get away with doing anything that will clearly prioritise one driver's points haul over another.
And that's one problem Red Bull extremely doesn't have and will not have any time soon.
If McLaren still has the buffer it has generally had so far, it'll shake out OK for the team come Abu Dhabi. But if the RB21 becomes just a little bit more of an all-rounder - and it already looked potent in race trim here - then it's really, truly game on for a three-way title fight in which McLaren will not have the best driver.
That won't be a fun position to be in.
Meek surrender but a one-off for now
Gary Anderson
First lap, first corner set the scene - it’s the first time this year I have seen Piastri be so timid. With Verstappen, if you give him an opening he is like a rat up a drain pipe.
That together with pitting far too early for the hard tyres, in a car that history has shown looks after its tyres better than any other, seemed like a strange decision to me - why would you do that?
But Lady Luck did also intervene, and though it was Verstappen's day, on the team side we shouldn't forget that Red Bull came away from Imola with 26 points, McLaren with 33 points.
I don't think McLaren has to worry just yet. But the motivation at Red Bull will be high, so if this sort of thing happens again in Monaco or Barcelona, then the tide could really turn.
