World champion Max Verstappen (Netherlands, Red Bull) had an extremely strong race and won the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at the “Imola“ track. Thus he recorded his second success since the start of the new Formula 1 season, reports BTA. Verstappen overtook for first place on the opening lap against the winner of the qualification Oscar Piastre (Australia, McLaren), who remained third behind his teammate Lando Norris (Great Britain, McLaren).
Piastre made a clean start to the race, but Verstappen entered the corner aggressively, stopped late and caught up with his rival, then overtook him in the second chicane. The Australian seemingly had a problem with the tires and the low temperature of the asphalt, as he not only quickly fell behind by one second from Red Bull car, and behind him in DRS range was third in the standings George Russell (Great Britain, Mercedes).
The Mercedes driver never managed to overtake Piastre, and later fell behind and was caught by Norris. The McLaren driver made an unsuccessful attempt to overtake his rival, but on lap 11 he did so and started chasing Piastre with a six-second deficit. Russell, on the other hand, pitted on lap 12 and changed to the medium tires, with which he had completed an additional three laps on Saturday.
Piastre entered the pit lane on lap 14 and so the gap between first and second place, in this case for Norris, was already ten seconds. After half way through the distance, Verstappen enjoyed a 20-second lead over the McLaren driver and only an extraordinary situation could have knocked the Dutch Red Bull driver off the top in classification. This happened on lap 46 with a safety car, which brought the leading three cars closer together.
Verstappen pitted on lap 47, followed by Norris immediately after. Piastre chose to stay on the track and got in front of his teammate, and the two entered a battle for second place. With the new tires, the Australian was an easy target for Norris and he overtook him on lap 58, but at the same time Verstappen enjoyed a comfortable 5-second lead.
The world champion won the race by 6.109 seconds over Norris, thus closing the gap between the two in the drivers' standings. Piastre has 146 points, followed by Norris with 133 and Verstappen with 125, with the Red Bull driver also winning the bonus point for the best lap in the race. "Imola".