Imola 2025 Heroes and Zeroes

[Alianora La Canta]

Heroes

Verstappen - What was that pass on lap 1? Incredible! Between that and unbeatable straight-line speed, Max had command all race.

Albon - The Williams had no right to be up there. It may have had help from the VSC/SC interventions, but that last stint was so quick - and it is a rare driver able to force Leclerc of all people to make a boundary overstep mistake.

Hamilton - Speaking of, it would have been so easy for them to have let driving frustrated turn into driving into the very low points at the back of a DRS train. Instead, both Hamilton and Leclerc. I'm giving Hamilton this one because of how beautifully he handled the last three laps of the race, but their success required both of them to show electric performance in a car that's not really up to that standard at this time.

Zeroes

Pirelli - C6? Cnothanks. It lasted about 4 corners. It was a pure distraction at Imola. It's hard to imagine any track, except maybe Monaco and the newly-resurfaced Suzuka, where it would last a whole lap and therefore be worth bringing again.

Sulayem - More attempts to stifle legitimate criticism and shut down safety conversations, masquerading as being more lenient about several issues that shouldn't be penalised at all, and still retaining the swearing regulation that prevents the drivers from answering some questions at the press conferences truthfully. (Yes, this is going to be Sulayem's "jar of lard…"

Briatore - The driver swap was a mistake. Given the level of disruption Alpine's already experiencing, it would have been a mistake more or less regardless of who was exchanging seats with whom. I feel like that disruption, not the names of the people in the seats, is the real obstacle, and Briatore's just making it worse.

[Jericoke]

I disagree on Pirelli being a zero.  Their job is to provide tires that make the race interesting  (and safe and fair). The c6 wasn't meant to be a useful tire, it was there to limit choices to the c5 and c4, which did spice the race strategy up.

Otherwise everyone would have started on the c4 and swapped to the c3 at lap 20.

The tires weren't the 'best' tires, but I believe that Pirelli did their job.

As for Zeroes, Aston Martin just can't catch a break this year. Even with their absolute steal in qualifying they still finished both cars hopelessly out of the points.

[Alianora La Canta]

According to Pirelli, C6 was meant to be a useful tyre, at least over a single lap. It didn't even manage that.