Formula 1: Imola race more important than the opener?
Although the opening round of the 2021 Formula 1 season in Bahrain was entertaining, it did not tell us everything about the order of performance among teams and drivers.
Bahrain is a friendly place to start a new Formula 1 season for all of the teams and drivers, especially rookies. With Bahrain International Circuit being wide and with plenty of runoff area for the drivers to explore, going wheel to wheel with another car is made a whole lot easier. From the main straight to the exit of turn four, racing is made simple.
AlphaTauri’s new acquisition and rookie Yuki Tsunoda made quite the impression during his first weekend as a fully-fledged Formula 1 driver. But, as Lando Norris affirmed on one of his Twitch streams, Bahrain is friendlier to rookies than most tracks are.
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Imola is whole different challenge. If you attempt to push the track limits around Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, you taste grass, then gravel, and then the wall at most of the corners, barring Piratella and Variante Alta.
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That, however, is not the biggest difference between the first two circuits on the 2021 schedule. As mentioned previously, overtaking is a big challenge. Tsunoda cannot “lunge like a rookie” on this layout.
The racing has to be different, with only one pure overtaking spot heading into turn one, Tamburello Chicane, and that primarily being with the use of DRS. Drivers will then most likely be stuck until their next meeting at turn one, unless whomever they are chasing makes a mistake on their tour.
Instead of Imola producing an overtaking massacre like Bahrain can at times, it will likely produce a race in which most moves for position are made by strategy, which invokes a different style of driving. Tire conservation will be a lot more important than it was in the season opener.
However, that point can be argued. The Bahrain Grand Prix was actually won by a driver who saved his tires until the end.
So, advantage Lewis Hamilton?
But Mercedes could again be behind Red Bull at Imola. Bahrain International Circuit has been a track that has suited Mercedes in recent years, and it is clear that they were still not the quickest car during the race weekend.
But despite what some believe, this year’s Mercedes is still a very fast car — just maybe not like the Red Bull. Away from the claims that Max Verstappen was losing three tenths of a second in the first sector due to a differential problem, the RB16B was dominant in the fast, flowing turns, specifically turns five, six and seven of the 15-turn, 3.363-mile (5.412-kilometer) road course in Sakhir, Bahrain.
Was that a one-off?
Imola is known very well for its fast, flowing corners in which drivers can maintain a high speed, one after the other. With the 21-turn, 3.05-mile (4.908-kilometer) road course in Imola, Emilia-Romagna, Italy having very different characteristics to Bahrain, will we see the actual order of the cars in terms of performance?
Back to Tsunoda for a second. If the young rookie is able to maintain his good form throughout the Imola weekend, then he is surely the real deal. Round one needed heroics, but round two will need a professional head for a solid result.
A Formula 1 calendar always consists of a few anomalies that do not reflect accurate results. Bahrain is a bit of an in-between. Imola is not, and after Imola on the schedule is Portimao. Algarve International Circuit is another fast, flowing circuit — again, with few genuine overtaking opportunities, for this era of Formula 1 cars at least.
This surely means that the performances at Imola will continue into round three. The big similarity between Bahrain and Portimao has little to do with the actual track; it is the runoff area. Portimao is another circuit that allows drivers to make some errors, crucially in turn one.
So by the time round four comes around in Spain, most will have forgotten about the order of performance in Bahrain.
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Do not mistake this; the Bahrain results are not insignificant or irrelevant. Just take them with a pinch of salt. The picture has not yet been painted. If the opening race had been held at Albert Park as initially scheduled, the chatter after the race into the build-up for the next would be vastly different than it is now.