Horrner hails ‘racing machine’ Verstappen’s ‘masterclass’ Imola display

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner described Max Verstappen’s performance in winning the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix as a “masterclass”, not only for holding off late pressure from Lando Norris but also for triumphing in a virtual endurance race on the same weekend.

The Dutchman faced a tense finale at Imola after his hard tires started to degrade, allowing Norris, who had spent most of the race in his wake, to close up. With three laps to go, the gap was down to a second, but Verstappen kept the McLaren driver at bay to take his fifth victory of the season by 0.725s.

Earlier on Sunday, Verstappen’s Team Redline esports outfit had won the Nürburgring 24 Hours virtual race, with the Dutchman sharing driving duties during Saturday night.

“He’s basically a racing machine, so him doing things like testing different set-ups through the night is par for the course for him, it’s not unusual,” said Horner after the race in Italy. “To win two races today, one in a BMW M3 and one in an F1 car – you heard what it meant to him. The pole yesterday [Saturday], he really dug deep, and today was a masterclass.”

Two weeks earlier, Verstappen had lost on track for the first time in two years when he was beaten by Norris in Miami. The Imola weekend got off to a difficult start for Red Bull, which struggled to find the right balance with the RB20 in Friday practice. The team took a “big swing” overnight, making significant setup changes that paid off on Saturday with a better car balance.

Nonetheless, Verstappen only just edged out the upgraded McLarens to claim his seventh consecutive pole position of the season, equalling Ayrton Senna’s record of eight straight poles.

For much of the race, Verstappen and Red Bull looked to be in control, until the final laps when the Dutchman’s pace dropped off and Norris closed in.

“In the first stint on the mediums, it felt like we were in control,” explained Horner. “When we put the hard tire on, the first half of that stint wasn’t a problem, but we started to lose temperature and performance in the tire.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

In the past, Verstappen has often won comfortably with margins of 10-20 seconds, so being under pressure in the closing stages was a rare occurrence for him. The Dutchman admitted that the sudden loss of performance on the hard tire caught the team by surprise, and it was so severe that he nearly went into the stands at Tosa, the seventh corner.

“On the medium tire, it was looking very good, but once I put the hard tire on, it wasn’t maybe the first five or ten laps, but then I was like, ‘I’m not sure if I’m going to make it to the end here,’” Verstappen said after the race.

“The tire was out of the window, it was like driving on ice, it was sliding around a lot. I had the feeling that in Turn 7, I almost went onto the stands. It was very difficult, and I had to run some very strange lines.

A factor that made Verstappen’s defense even more precarious in the closing stages was that he had already been warned three times for running off track, earning a black-and-white flag from the stewards. Another infringement would have resulted in a penalty and cost him the victory.

“I was just trying to survive, and then suddenly Lando picked up the pace. I could see him coming, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to hold him off. When he’s half a second quicker per lap, that’s pretty quick,” the reigning champion continued.

“But there’s nothing you can do about it. When you don’t have the balance, you can’t suddenly find half a second. I was just trying not to make mistakes, overcome the balance issues and try to be a bit quicker on the straights with the help of our rear wing – we were quite fast there.

“I had a lot of understeer on the mediums, and if I missed apexes, it would sometimes push me off the track. Later on, I left a bit more margin. When Lando came up, the last few laps were trickier because I had to use the track as much as possible. That required more concentration, and you had to be very sure of what you were doing on every exit.”