Red Bull driver Max Verstappen of the Netherlands celebrates on the podium after winning the Italian Emilia Romagna Formula One Grand Prix, at the Enzo and Dino Ferrari racetrack in Imola, Italy, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

2025 marks the 75th year of racing in Formula 1 (F1) and the race in Imola, Italy, this past weekend celebrated the week when F1 had its first race ever: May 13, 1950. That race was actually in Silverstone, England, but Imola has seen its fair share of historic events over the years.

Some of Imola’s events were epic battles between the titans of F1, like Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost fighting, both on track and off, in 1989. Others, however, were unfortunately tragic such as the 1994 race when Saturday saw the death of driver Roland Ratzenberger, and Sunday saw the death of Senna.

Twenty years ago, Michael Schumacher started 13th, but had blistering pace in his Ferrari and was soon challenging Fernando Alonso, who was driving for Renault at the time, for the lead. In a stellar defensive battle, Alonso managed to keep the feisty Schumacher behind him for 12 laps of nose-to-tail battling, and win the race. Considering Schumacher had seven wins in Imola in his career, this was no small feat.

2005 marked not only that epic duel for Alonso, but also his first of two back-to-back World Championship titles. Twenty years later, Alonso is now driving for Aston Martin as the oldest driver in the field (at the ripe old age of 43), and he has found himself in the very unusual position of not scoring any points after six races. Taking a chance on the medium tire compound in qualifying, Alonso managed to secure fifth position on the grid and seemed ready to remedy his goose egg score.

Tires were the dominant point of conversation throughout the weekend at Imola. Pirelli, the one and only tire manufacturer for F1 since 2011, introduced a new tire compound over the weekend and drivers worked on coming to terms with it.

Every weekend, Pirelli brings three compounds of tires they designate as soft, medium, and hard (in addition to two compounds of wet weather tires). They had a scale of “C1” through “C5” tires, with “C1” being the hardest and “C5” the softest. The softer the tire, the more grip it gives the drivers and the quicker they’ll be able to drive, but the tire degrades faster.

Each venue marks a change in the three compounds, and in Imola, Pirelli brough the “C4,” “C5,” and their new “C6” tires, representing the softest group of tires they could possibly bring. The reason why has to do with the track being very quick and generally nonabrasive to the tires, meaning cars can keep tires in a good working range for a longer period of time.

Drivers struggled to keep the new soft tires in the best condition for even one full lap. They were prognosticated to give quick qualifying times, but generally not be used in the actual race. In all three rounds of qualifying, both Aston Martin drivers (Alonso and Lance Stroll) used soft tires for their first lap, but then switched to the medium (in this case, “C5”) tires and managed to do a better second lap.

Other teams didn’t follow Aston Martin’s lead on that, and seemingly suffered worse qualifying times because of it. The one exception was George Russell with Mercedes who used medium tires to get up to third position in qualifying. While Russell and the Aston Martin duo were happy with the results, several other teams drastically underperformed.

The track in Imola is officially titled “Autodroomo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari” and the Tifosi, the Ferrari fans decked out in red, are definitely the largest part of the crowd around the track. Both Ferrari cars were out of qualifying in the second round. This marked the first time in the history of racing at Imola that no Ferrari drivers started in the top ten positions.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, the 18-year-old phenom at Mercedes, is Italian and many came out to see him continue the brilliant driving he put on display in Miami. He was out of qualifying along with the Ferrari drivers in the second round.

Others lined the track with their blue and white shirts displaying their Argentinian pride for Franco Colapinto who replaced Jack Doohan at Alpine for at least the next five races. Colapinto crashed at the end of the first round of qualifying.

While many fans were disappointed, those who cheer on the McLarens of Oscar Piastri (on pole) and Lando Norris (in fourth), or Red Bull’s Max Verstappen (in second) had plenty to be excited about. Red Bull marked this as their 400th race in F1, and Piastri was trying to become the first McLaren driver since the late Senna to win four races in a row.

When the lights went out and the race got underway, Piastri had a pretty good start and Russell had an even better one, getting ahead of Verstappen in the first corner. As the cars went into the second corner, however, Russell got blocked behind Piastri who broke early, and Verstappen took advantage, passing them both around the outside in a daring and brilliant maneuver.

Despite a lack of pace in qualifying, the two Ferrari drivers showed a lot of race pace in their cars early in the race. Charles Leclerc’s tire strategy surprised many as he pulled into the pits very early, on lap 10 out of 63, to change from his medium tires to a set of hard tires. The mediums were deteriorating quicker than anticipated, and the pace Leclerc had on new tires had him cruising through the field. Other drivers needed to respond, so Russell pitted on lap 11 along with Williams driver Carlos Sainz. Alonso came in on lap 12, and second place Piastri came in on lap 13.

Piastri remained quick, but had to get through several drivers to get back up into a position where his lap times could challenge Verstappen who retained the lead and chose not to pit. No other drivers pitted until Colapinto on lap 22 and Norris, Piastri’s teammate, on lap 28. The medium tires had a graining phase where they lost performance, but then the performance came back and the patient drivers benefited.

Verstappen and many other drivers benefited even more on lap 29 when the Haas car of Esteban Ocon ground to a stop and a virtual safety car forced the drivers to slow their pace around the entire track. This meant the usual 28 second pitstop would only cost drivers about 18 seconds as drivers must go at slower speeds during the virtual safety car period.

Verstappen managed to pit and come maintaining a more than 20-second gap to the second-place driver. Drivers like Leclerc, Alonso, and Piastri bemoaned their lack of luck in the situation, and all three have fallen victim to this fate multiple times in the past. Alonso seemed utterly distraught over the radio.

Fortunes changed again on lap 45 when Antonelli suffered a car failure and pulled over, just a matter of yards further down the track than Ocon. This time, the stewards deployed the safety car meaning the entire field would bunch up behind it and Verstappen’s lead was gone.

Piastri didn’t want to sacrifice track position by pitting and stayed out, taking back second place on track behind Verstappen who had time in hand for a pit stop giving him fresh tires. Norris pitted as well, coming out in third and also on fresh tires. Now it was up to McLaren’s strategy. Would they let Norris past Piastri to challenge Verstappen for the win? Or would they let their drivers fight it out on track and just see what happens?

As they’ve been promising for quite some time, McLaren actually let their drivers fight it out on track and issued no team orders to force any outcome. This probably cost them a chance at a win, but Verstappen looked quick all race and it probably would’ve been difficult for Norris to pass him. Norris did manage to get past Piastri, however, and they finished the race Verstappen, Norris, Piastri.

That’s the exact opposite of the order of the drivers in the championship where Piastri leads, Norris is in second, and Verstappen is in third. After Verstappen’s win, the three of them are separated by a mere 22 points, less than the 25 points awarded for a race win. This championship is definitely still up in the air.

While Piastri couldn’t manage to get to four wins in a row for McLaren, Verstappen did manage to become the first driver in F1 history to win four times in a row at the Imola circuit. Red Bull was quite excited to have a win on their four hundredth race in the sport.

Also of note, Verstappen’s teammate Yuki Tsunoda managed to overcome his accident in qualifying, putting him in the last starting position for the race, and finish in tenth place. He crossed the line a mere 0.804 seconds ahead of Alonso who missed out on his first points of the season in heartbreaking fashion.

This was the first race in a European tripleheader with the drivers next taking to the streets of Monaco. The feature race takes place on Sunday, May 25, at 9 a.m. Eastern Time.