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 the way he held off late pressure from Lando Norris but also for triumphing in the virtual Nürburgring 24 Hours earlier in the weekend.

The closing stages of the Emilia Romagna race had a tense finale, with Verstappen, after struggling with degradation on his hard tyres, coming under threat from Norris, who had spent much of the afternoon in his wake. With three laps to go, the gap was down to a second, but the Dutchman managed to keep the McLaren at bay and took his fifth win of the season by 0.725s.

Earlier on Sunday, Verstappen’s Team Redline esports outfit had claimed victory in the Nürburgring 24 Hours sim race, with the Dutchman sharing driving duties during the night stint.

“He’s basically a racing machine, so him doing things like testing different set-ups overnight is par for the course for him, it’s not unusual,” said Horner after the race at Imola. “And to win two races today – one in a BMW M3 and one in an F1 car – you heard how much that meant to him. Yesterday’s pole position, he really dug deep for that, and then today was a masterclass.”

Two weeks ago, Verstappen lost for the first time on track to another driver in two years when he was beaten in Miami by Norris. The Emilia Romagna weekend got off to a difficult start for Red Bull, which struggled to find the right balance with its RB20 on Friday. The team elected to take a “big risk” with major set-up changes overnight, which paid off with a better car balance on Saturday and a qualifying lap that just pipped the upgraded McLarens for pole – his seventh consecutive pole, equalling Ayrton Senna’s record of eight in a row.

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

“In the first stint on the mediums, it felt like we had everything under control,” explained Horner. “The first part of the hard tyre wasn’t a problem, but we started to lose temperature and performance in the tyre.”

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

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

In the past, Verstappen has often cruised to victory with comfortable margins of 10-20 seconds, so the late pressure he faced in Imola was a rare occurrence. The Dutchman admitted that the sudden loss of performance from his hard tyres caught the team by surprise, and it was so severe that he nearly ended up in the grandstands at Tosa on lap 53.

“On the mediums, it was great, but as soon as I put on the hard tyre, it wasn’t maybe the first five or ten laps, but then I was like, ‘I’m not sure if I can make it to the end here,’” said Verstappen post-race. “The tyre just went out of the window and it was like driving on ice, it was very, very slippery. I felt like I almost went onto the grandstand at Turn 7. It was very difficult and I had to run some strange lines.”

Another factor that made Verstappen’s final moments so fraught was that he had already been shown a black-and-white flag for exceeding track limits three times, leaving him on a warning and at risk of a penalty should he do so again.

“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 could hold him off. Half a second a lap quicker is pretty quick,” continued the reigning champion. “But there’s nothing you can do when you don’t have the balance. You can’t suddenly find half a second. I was just trying not to make a mistake, try to overcome the balance issues and get a bit more speed down the straights with the help of our rear wing. We were quite fast on the straights.

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