Two things became clear around Imola’s narrow high-speed corners.
The first is that McLaren’s one-lap advantage is at its smallest when the track layout skews towards fast bends. In Imola, just as in Japan and Saudi Arabia, Red Bull Racing — or Max Verstappen at least — was able to close in and genuinely challenge for pole.
The second is that Oscar Piastri remains McLaren’s coolest customer.
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The Australian knew the importance of nailing qualifying at this circuit. He knew too that McLaren too often underperforms in Q3 and that he was coming off his own worst qualifying performance in Miami last time out.
The result? A clinically executed pole to make himself favourite for victory.
“I think Oscar once again proved how cool he is,” team boss Andrea Stella said of his lead driver. “Just confirmation of the talent that we know we have in hand.”
PIASTRI FAVOURITE FOR VICTORY
The question heading into qualifying wasn’t whether McLaren had the car to compete for pole; the question was whether its drivers could nail their chance to take top spot at a circuit where track position is extremely important.
Piastri answered the question in the affirmative with a stunning final lap.
The title leader started the final runs provisionally second on the grid behind Verstappen, who was typically punching above the weight of his car to capitalise on Piastri’s imperfect first lap.
But the Australian firmly slammed the door in the first two sectors with his final attempt — until he encountered a gaggle of slow-moving cars preparing for their won last laps in the final sector.
Having improved by around 0.1 seconds in each of the previous two sectors, Piastri couldn’t even set a personal best as he threaded his car through the traffic. Suddenly his ace looked returnable.
“I was going to lose my s**t if that last corner cost me pole,” he radioed to his team.
But he’d done enough in the first two corners to put himself beyond reach. Though Verstappen improved with his final lap, it wasn’t by enough to beat his rival, and he fell 0.034 seconds short.
The importance of this result it twofold.
The first is the way Piastri answered that original question from the start of qualifying. On a track that heavily punishes mistakes, Piastri walked right up to the limit of the car’s potential and nailed his chance, doing enough to even earn himself a buffer to protect himself from that slow traffic that hampered the end of his lap.
Too often this season — three times from seven grands prix — McLaren’s drivers have failed to do so, including at the previous race in Miami, where Piastri slumped to fourth. Not this time, however.
The additional element this weekend is the importance of starting position in Imola. Overtaking is very difficult at this narrow circuit, and another one-stop race with limited strategy potential is forecast.
If Piastri can get a good start — and he now has a positive history of seeing off Verstappen’s first-turn challenges — he’ll be well on his way to a fourth successive victory.
And if the top four were to finish where they started, Piastri would end the weekend with more than one clear grand prix victory worth of points over Norris at the top of the standings — and that would be quite the early statement heading into the long European leg of the season.
Colapinto apologises after massive crash | 00:44
NORRIS FLOPS AGAIN
Piastri’s gain is Norris’s pain, with the Briton underperforming yet again at the crunch moment of Q3.
Norris was clearly quick around Imola. He was just 0.025 seconds slower than Piastri on Friday and turned that into a 0.1-second advantage at the end of FP3.
He was third quickest after the first runs of Q3, but he was still only 0.141 seconds behind the sister car, and that was largely thanks to minor moments through Tosa and Acque Minerali. Pole should’ve been within reach.
But as we’ve seen so many times this season, actually it wasn’t.
Under the pressure of competing for pole, Norris wilted, with a mistake at Tamburello blowing him way off course.
He failed to improve, leaving the door wide open to George Russell to beat him to third, the Mercedes driver doing so with the theoretically slower medium tyre.
It’s the third time in the last four races Norris has failed to put his McLaren inside the top three on the grid, and he now trails Piastri 3-4 in the qualifying head-to-head with an average deficit of 0.117 seconds.
“I made a lot of mistakes,” he said, per Autosport.
“Never good enough in my final lap in quali. Everyone goes quicker and I always go slower. Just not good enough.
“Qualifying has been my biggest strength by a long way. This year it’s just not coming my way. I think we understand some reasons why.
“Of course I’m not going to be the happiest about it because I want to be fighting for pole. Things are just not going the way that they should do.”
It puts him in a difficult position for the race, with overtaking difficult, but perpetuates his difficult season-long position.
“We know that at the moment for Lando it’s about finding the last tenth of a second,” team principal Andrea Stella told Sky Sports. “He still needs to find the perfect feeling with the MCL39.
“We are working on that, and I’m sure this will be improving for the future.”
But not only is Norris at risk of losing significant points in this adjustment phase, there’s limited promise that upgrades could cure his uneasiness with the car at the limit. McLaren will devote only so much resource to what is already a dominant car, at least in race trim, given the challenge of 2026 looms large.
We can no longer consider Norris’s issue transitory or minor. It’s fundamental in 2025 given the important of qualifying at most tracks, and if he’s going to mount the title challenge expected of him, it’s up to him to adjust — and fast.
Tsunoda somehow walks away in HUGE crash | 01:43
FERRARI P-NOWHERE IN HOPELESS HOME PERFORMANCE
What a shocker.
Ferrari arrived at its first home race — the closest grand prix to its home in Maranello — with some upgrades and the hope of generating some momentum.
It ended with its worst qualifying result of the season.
Ferrari was 0.934 seconds off the pace, and both drivers were eliminated from Q2, Charles Leclerc in 11th and Lewis Hamilton in 12th.
It was the third-worst team by grid position, with every team bar Sauber and Haas getting at least one car ahead of the Ferrari duo.
“I’m very disappointed, especially at home,” a glum Leclerc said. “It’s such a special grand prix for the team. It just hurts.
“It will have hurt anyway, whatever track, but here it hurts a lot more.
“I have no words about our performance today. The only thing we can say is we are sorry for this kind of performance at home and in general.
“We are just not good enough at the moment, and we’ve got to do better.”
There was a final devastating dimension to Ferrari’s grim home qualifying result.
Pirelli brought a new, softer tyre to Imola this year. Combined with year-on-year development all but three teams improved on their qualifying performances from this track last year.
Ferrari wasn’t just one of the three, it was the worst of the lot.
Year-on-year performance, Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix
1. Williams: 1.002 seconds faster
2. Aston Martin: 0.561 seconds faster
3. Mercedes: 0.427 seconds faster
4. Alpine: 0.401 seconds faster
5. Sauber: 0.366 seconds faster
6. McLaren: 0.150 seconds faster
7. Red Bull Racing: 0.042 seconds faster
8. Racing Bulls: 0.152 seconds slower
9. Haas: 0.508 seconds slower*
10. Ferrari: 0.634 seconds slower
Haas’s time considers the lap Oliver Bearman completed but had stripped from him during the late Q1 red flag. Haas presumably would’ve gone faster in Q2 too, making this comparison unrepresentative.
Racing Bulls, meanwhile, is slower by its all-rookie line-up.
‘We’re taking a beating in the media’ | 01:05
But what’s Ferrari’s excuse?
It depends on who you ask.
“I think we made some improvements this weekend, but it’s not showing for some reason,” a surprisingly upbeat Hamilton said. “For some reason we just didn’t switch on the tyres at the end there, and I think it was the same for Charles.
“I don’t think that’s where the car’s at. I think we made some really good progress this weekend, and it doesn’t show in the results, which is why I’m devastated to see us get knocked out there.”
Ferrari wasn’t the only team to struggle with the new softest compound — some teams even used the medium compound in Q2 and Q3 — though it certainly suffered the most.
Leclerc, however, had a far less optimistic outlook of Ferrari’s place in the pecking order.
“We are just P-nowhere at the moment,” he told Sky Sports. “There’s not enough performance in the car, and I keep repeating myself that it’s not the potential we hoped for inside this car at the moment, and we need to be better.”
Leclerc’s reading of the situation begs the question: has Ferrari’s big design changes for 2025 simply made last year’s car — which ended the season as the fastest in the sport — much, much slower?
And if so, what does that say for the rest of the season?
Leclerc had an answer for that too, looking ahead to a long race at a narrow track starting 11th.
“I can fight as much as I want, but I cannot do miracles,” he said. “This is what there is in the car, and I’m trying to extract the maximum out of it. That’s it.”
Oscar Piastri wins prestigious award | 01:05
COLAPINTO FAILS BRIATORE CHALLENGE
It was a bad first performance for Franco Colapinto, and not just because his car ended up in a hundred bits by the side of the road at the end of Q1.
The Argentine had been respectably fast when he took too much risk through Tamburello and ended up spinning into the barrier — no better or worse than would’ve been expected of a rookie in his situation, with his margin up to Pierre Gasly 0.319 seconds.
Even the crash itself isn’t all that surprising at such a punishing circuit. Yuki Tsunoda, with far more experience, paid a big price for a relatively small mistake earlier in the session.
The problem is that Colapinto broke a crucial requirement laid down by de facto team principal Flavio Briatore.
“He needs to be fast, not crash, and score points,” he told Sky Sport Italy earlier in the week. “I’m only asking him these three things — not 10. If he does them well, he’ll drive forever.”
This was shortly after he denied ever having said Colapinto had five races to prove himself despite the Alpine press release saying as much multiple times, including in quotes attributed to him.
In any other circumstance you could easily write Colapinto’s crash down to a rookie error as he adjusts to a new car and team.
But Alpine’s ruthless dispatching of Jack Doohan has set a precedent that rookie-like performances aren’t good enough, so there shouldn’t be any reason to expect clemency on this occasion.
And while it’s early in this run of five — or more, perhaps infinite — races, Colapinto’s crash immediately reignited criticism that he was too crash prone last year after his strong start at Williams.
Highly unlikely to score tomorrow, Colapinto will need to immediately reset for the riskiest race of them all in Monaco next weekend, where the question will become: can the Argentine be fast without crashing, or does his speed come with a big repair bill?