Within Emilia Romagna GPthe first of the European tour of the 2024 F1 season, most of the teams presented their first major evolution packages to their cars, with many new parts to try since Friday’s free practice 1 and a lot of work to understand the this new feature , the behavior of the car, the tires and, above all, finding the appropriate settings to find the optimal balance of the cars.
Lots of work, more than usual, for FP1, FP2 and probably FP3 tomorrow, Saturday, before qualifying. And for now, What was seen in Free Practice 1 this Friday afternoon was surprisingespecially because of the enormous problem that the great dominator of the World Cup, world champion Max Verstappen.
Red Bull showed an important evolution of the car to follow and at the moment, the Dutchman is not comfortable with his car. The Dutchman suffered two off-track runs in the same session, something very unusual for him, where everything was usually fine except for the example two weeks ago in Miami, where zero degradation occurred on the track evened things out with an improved McLaren who finally beat him. Here at Imola, with a little more wear and improved car, a Max is expected to hit the table from the start. But it is the opposite.
Verstappen is struggling
The wind, strong and gusty, didn’t help anyone and many mistakes were seen. But Max is increasingly uncomfortable, with a double fear. The first came with strong oversteer under braking. He arrived with a record in the first ector and a personal best time in the second, in a fast lap, but the three-time champion lost the car when braking at one of the chicanes on the Italian track. And in the final seconds, a new problem for Max as he pushed the soft rubber in search of the best time. In that second action, he experienced understeer and his car went outside onto the gravel, possibly damaging a ground that should have been handled.
Despite this, this is only the first session and we should not jump to conclusions. It has been seen Max He had to struggle to find the balance of the car at the beginning of the course and then he started to destroy it. They have to continue searching for him again in Free Practice 2 of Imolaalthough already known rivals such as Ferrari either McLaren They are pushing harder than ever.
In fact, the leader of the session was Charles Leclerc with a completely new Ferrari, with a great evolutionary package in his home event, a few kilometers from Maranello and before a dedicated stand full of typhoids eager to defeat their staff. Leclerc set the pace with a 1’16.990, leaving second place, George Russell, more than a tenth behind, with a Mercedes with changes.
Sainz, third at the start
Carlos Sainz, with that new Ferrari, was third by 2 tenths, while the Red Bulls, with problems, were not far behind despite a bad start. Pérez was 4th by 3 tenths, with Verstappen close to 7 thousandths behind the Mexican, who closed out the Top-5.
Norris, winner in Miami, was 8th behind Hamilton (7th) who suffered a spin and went to the gravel in the second subsequent action.
Alonso, working on his improvements
Fernando Alonso started 10th, without looking at the hours and with a lot of shadow work. Aston Martin also showed many evolutions and Fernando’s work focused on them, with a session with ways to start to find the right balance of the car with some configuration changes.
It is too early to draw conclusions. today is friday There is still a lot of fabric to be cut and uncertainty is at an all-time high due to the many improvements that have debuted on track with all the cars.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
