2021 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix Result Review + Great and Grape

Formula 1 is back in Europe for Round 2 and the wet-dry race was won by Max Verstappen for Red Bull as Mercedes drivers made uncharacteristic mistakes. To know more our 2021 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix Result Review attempts to cover as much of that as possible.

This bite sized review takes a look through the laps that mattered, the quickest way to relive the best bits without watching anything.

Then there are our ratings of the race itself, the drivers, and finish off with a bunch of graphs that are just interesting enough.

Talking of bunches, we nominate our best and worst into the great and grape. Great being good, and grape being bad for reasons we won’t bore you with.

Bits and pieces happened without anything too exciting breaking out, but our review of it all is below.

2021 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix Result – THE LAPS THAT MATTERED

Didn’t see the race live? Don’t have time to watch the whole race? Well here are the top laps where stuff happened. Normally it is five or ten, so you know it was a good race if there’s more than ten. 

We write these live as we go, sort of like a minute by minute for the football.

Lap 0 – Rain pours on certain points of the track, creating a wet-dry start to the Grand Prix. Fernando Alonso had a spin on his way to the grid to demonstrate how slippery it was. Charles Leclerc spins off halfway around the parade lap but recovers in time to take his grid slot.

Lap 1 – Verstappen blasts off the grid from third and passes Perez within hundreds of metres and gets Lewis Hamilton into the first chicane, Hamilton damages his front wing after his awkward line in the first chicane. Replays shows Verstappen giving no compromise on line on the exit of the first chicane. Leclerc gets past Perez for third.

Nicholas Latifi crashes into the wall after a clash with Mazespin (although this one wasn’t his fault). This is not long after Latifi had spun the corner before. It’s a hefty crash and the full safety car comes out.

ORDER – VER HAM LEC PER RIC GAS STR SAI NOR BOT

Lap 4 – Mick Schumacher spins behind the safety car into the wall just beyond the pit exit. He caused this by warming up his tyres and losing it. The light crash into the wall removes the front wing only by the looks.

Lap 7 – Safety Car is in and the Hamilton-Verstappen rivalry continues.

Lap 8 – Verstappen is a mere three second in front of Hamilton after one lap. Clear running of course but still. And make that nearly five seconds after two laps from the Safety Car. Behind the top five there’s a four way battle between Gasly, Norris, Sainz, Stroll. Norris up to sixth already after a poor start.

Lap 11 – Gap has stabilised between Verstappen and Hamilton to 5 seconds. Carlos Sainz runs off the track behind them. Norris is charging having passed his team mate Ricciardo for fifth. Gasly is holding up a bunch of cars because of his full wet tyre choice. He’s praying for rain, which doesn’t come. One car following being Bottas who is putting in a stinker.

Lap 12 – Perez given a 10 second Stop-Go penalty as replays shows he overtook cars behind the safety car after running wide. He was fourth at the time, but was complaining on radio about a steering wheel issue.

ORDER – VER HAM LEC PER RIC NOR SAI STR BOT RUS

Lap 15-20+ – A lot of radio comms from drivers whining about their wet weather tyres. Change to slicks is imminent but like a virgin at an orgy no one wants to go first and look a fool. Meanwhile George Russell got into the points during this time, on track to make up for blowing it last season at Imola.

Vettel is first to test slicks on lap 22. Brave choice from the German given his car/form so far in 2021.

Lap 26 – Sainz takes Ricciardo for sixth in the first major move for a while. Hamilton within 1.5 seconds of Verstappen at this stage.

Lap 28 – Verstappen pits for slick tyres and Hamilton stays out. Max drops to third and 28 seconds behind Hamilton. Sainz, Ricciardo, Stroll all pit too.

Lap 29 – Hamilton pits for slicks, but a delay with his pitstop sees Max Verstappen get back in front. .

Lap 31 – Lewis Hamilton runs off the track at Tosa!!!! He keeps the engine running and eventually reverses out of the gravel and drags his car and front wing back to the pits. After his pit stop he comes out in 

Lap 32 – Huge crash!!!!! Safety Car comes out. George Russell and Valtteri Bottas crash at high speed heading into the first chicane. Russell goes onto the grass trying to overtake Bottas on the right heading into the first chicane and loses control and runs into Bottas’ side of the car and both fly out of control into the first chicane gravel. Both drivers blame each other, so waiting for a better replay.

RED FLAG – RACE STOPPED AT LAP 34

ORDER – VER LEC NOR PER SAI RIC STR RAI HAM TSU

Lap 35 – Race restarts. Max Verstappen nearly spins off before the race restarts trying to warm up the tyres. Lando Norris gets ahead of Leclerc for second. Hamilton gets pass Kimi. Tsunoda spun off but recovered further back at this first chicane.

Lap 40’s – Verstappen doing it easy out in front -12 second in front of the impressive Norris by lap 49. Hamilton continues his charge back up the field.

ORDER – VER NOR LEC HAM SAI RIC STR GAS RAI OCO

Lap 54 – Norris, Leclerc and Hamilton have formed a nice little battle group. Meanwhile Verstappen sets a fastest lap and is 16 seconds up the road. Hamilton takes Leclerc for third.

Lap 60 – After a few attempts, Lewis Hamilton gets Lando Norris for second on the way down to the first chicane with the help of DRS.

Lap 62 – Mazespin does what our poor nickname suggests.

Lap 63 – Max Verstappen does it easy and wins. Lewis Hamilton recovers well to finish second. Lando Norris delights himself with third.

FINAL ORDER – VER HAM NOR LEC SAI RIC STR GAS RAI OCO

2021 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix Result – RACE RATING

We rate the big race itself so we know which races to go back and watch in the off season or one to simply remember the winner for the post season quiz nights.

SEASON IMPORTANCE – 6/10

Second race of the season so plenty of time to catch up, but we did get a window into wet weather performance today. And was Lewis Hamilton’s mistake a sign he and Mercedes are cracking under the pressure of not being the outright fastest car.

ON TRACK ACTION – 7/10

Some on track action early and a few incidents here and there, but these cars are so good mechanically and aerodynamically that they even make a wet race kind of boring during the middle laps.

Slicks tyre changing brought a new variable and within laps there was Lewis Hamilton running wide and an all mighty crash between Bottas and Russell. It also bunched up the field again nicely.

ENDING 4 / 10

Aside from Lewis Hamilton climbing back to second, and the usual fastest lap blasts, there wasn’t much happening.

OVERALL RATING 17 / 30

A wet-dry race that was interesting enough, but certainly not a classic. Red flags hurt enthusiasm for those in the GMT +10 time zones and worse.

2021 SEASON RACE RANKINGS

Bahrain GP – 25/30

2021 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix Result – Great & Grape

Here we go through the field and highlight the three drivers we think deserve a little extra love, and one driver whose had the grapest weekend of all.

These points get added to our Driver of the Season scores. Five points for a great nomination, and -10 for the worst or grapest driver in the pack. Then it is +2 / -2 for honourable or dishonourable mentions.

It used to be called the good, bad and ugly, but everyone is using that now. And who doesn’t like grapes.

THE GREAT  – MAX VERSTAPPEN

Blasted off the grid an got past Perez and Hamilton by the first chicane. Had a five second lead after two laps after the Safety Car left. Maintained the lead with ease. Got himself a decent gift when Lewis Hamilton drove wide and into the gravel before his pit stop.

THE GREAT – LANDO NORRIS

Should have started top three in qualifying but got his best time deleted for going outside of track dimensions by enough. Ironically started the restarted race in third. Had his illustrious team mate covered all weekend.

THE GREAT – CHARLES LECLERC

Qualified best of the best in fourth, ran a strong third in the race, and was second when the race was red flagged. In the meantime his team mate was having a rough old day.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

LANCE STROLL – The maligned Stroll has made his World Champion team mate look average, and he took some more points on Sunday in another solid showing.

THE GRAPE – VALTTERI BOTTAS

A truly terrible race for the Finn at Imola. Qualified 8th and struggled to get out of the midfield during the race. He underlined that point by crashing with Williams driver George Russell which brought out the red flag. A most annoying thing for those trying to watch a race not in Europe.

You would think for someone who lives a country where they have snow that their wet weather driving would be untouchable.

DIS-HONOURABLE MENTIONS

DANIEL RICCIARDO – Off the pace of his team mate for most of the important sessions and the race.

NICHOLAS LATIFI – Should have been a great after outqualifying George Russell but after spinning and crashing in consecutive corners his race can be summed up as grape.

SEBASTIAN VETTEL – We can’t see this lasting the entire 2021 season. Another meh race from the four time World Champion.

2021 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix Result – Martini Trophy

A feature on this website is determining the driver of the year. 

This recognises not just the driver with the most amount of points at the end of the year, but factoring performance against their team mate, possibly outperforming the car, and a nod to our Great and Grape above. A full explanation is below the results.

The Martini Trophy is named after one of our favourite F1 drivers of all time, the underrated Pierluigi Martini.

2021 DRIVER OF THE YEAR STANDINGS

CURRENT STANDINGS BY RACE

2021 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix Result – Quick Stats

Here are the quickest and more interesting stats from the weekend. Of course this will build as the season progresses and there’s more interesting stats to share.

FIRST LAP GAINS

QUALIFYING

2021 DRIVER OF THE YEAR POINTS SUMMARY

Here’s how the points work this season. Essentially the perfect race (Win from Pole, Fastest Lap, thrash team mate, best in race etc) should amount to the perfect 100 points.

FIRST LAP GAINS +0.5pts per position gained -0.5pts per position lost.
CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS – 25pts to 1pt as per World Championship
BEAT TEAM MATE (RACE) – 10pts (if both finish or other driver got self inflicted DNF)
FASTEST LAP – 5pts – 1pt for top five drivers.
GRID POSITION TO RACE POSITION – formula +/- relative finish to grid
BEST OF THE REST (RACE) – 5pts to 1pt – top five non Mercedes-Red Bull drivers
QUALIFYING – 20pts to 1pt – Grid Position 1 to 20.
BEAT TEAM MATE (QUALIFYING) – 5pts
BEST OF THE REST (QUALIFYING) – 5pts to 1pt – top five non Mercedes-Red Bull drivers
GREAT/GRAPE – 5pts Great 2pts Honourable Mention -2Pts Dishonourable Mention -10Pts Grape
BEAT TEAM MATE (QUALIFYING) – Formula for % beaten team mate by
FREE PRACTICE HERO – 10Pts to 1Pt – Average Position across all three practice sessions.
WIN FROM POLE – Bonus 10 Points
WIN FROM POLE WITH FASTEST LAP – Bonus 5 Points