Max Verstappen hits back with a crushing victory at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix after Charles Leclerc spins himself off the podium late. Featuring Thomas Maher from Racing News 365.
Valtteri Bottas completed a Friday clean sweep by topping second practice at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix after Max Verstappen retired from the session with a drive problem.
The Finn set his quickest time of 1m15.551s on the medium compound early in the session, and though he undertook a subsequent three-lap qualifying simulation with the grippiest soft tire, he was unable to improve.
He was followed closely by teammate Lewis Hamilton, who was able to fractionally improve on his medium-tire time with the softs, though only enough to close to within 0.01s.
Continue reading on RACERNo team has reigned over Formula One for as long as Mercedes, but all empires come to an end eventually.
I review the action from the 2020 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix with Ted Kravitz from Sky Sports.
Lewis Hamilton led a Mercedes one-two to earn his team a seventh consecutive drivers championship and put himself on the cusp of his own septuple of titles, but he needed a considerable slice of luck to get the job done.
Championship leader Hamilton was arguably the less impressive Mercedes driver this weekend. Bottas had not only got pole, but the Finn’s perfect getaway ensured he was best place to lead what was a largely processional race to the flag at his own pace. Hamilton, on the other hand, dropped to third off the line behind Verstappen and struggled early in the race to make an impression on the Dutchman.
But from lap two the Bottas’s race began unravelling. Running over some debris on track that damaged his floor and became lodged among his bargeboards, the race momentum shifted dramatically in Hamilton’s favour, who needed no second asking to assemble the broken pieces of Bottas’s race into a ninth victory of his own.
Mercedes has won a record-breaking seventh consecutive constructors championship with a Lewis Hamilton-led one-two finish in Imola at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
The German marque’s undefeated run since 2014 beats Ferrari’s previous record of six straight titles between 1999 and 2004.
Mercedes is also guaranteed a seventh straight drivers title, with only Valtteri Bottas in mathematical contention to catch points leader Hamilton with four rounds remaining.
Mercedes has won an unprecedented seventh consecutive constructors championship with a Lewis Hamilton-led one-two victory at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in Imola.
Continue reading on RACERFormula One’s first two-day weekend takes place at one motor racing’s great venues: Imola, the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, where an interesting race awaits.
The format change to expunge Friday practice from the schedule fulfils two aims. The first is to reduce the logistical burden of road travel between Portugal and Italy for back-to-back weekends, particularly with the background of COVID-19 restrictions.
The second reason has potentially far-reach consequences — the evaluation of the viability of a shortened format to ease the burden of individual races in exchange for cramming more events into a season.
Valtteri Bottas will start from pole position ahead of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton in F1’s first race in Imola in 14 years.
Bottas trailed Hamilton by 0.031 seconds after their first laps of the top-10 shootout, but a 0.2-second improvement with his second lap turned that into a 0.097-second advantage at the flag, delivering him his fourth pole of the season.
“I knew in the last lap I had to risk it and go hard and the car responded,” he said. “It’s a great feeling to get pole. I had the shakes afterwards!”
Valtteri Bottas snatched a fourth 2020 pole position from teammate Lewis Hamilton to lead a Mercedes front-row lockout at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
Continue reading on RACERLewis Hamilton positioned himself for pole at Imola for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix after topping the weekend’s only practice session.
Continue reading on RACER