F1 | Red Bull-McLaren: the duel was played on temperatures

The last two Grands Prix have something in common. In both the Miami and Imola events, after a few laps the fate of the race seemed to be written, with Max Verstappen on the run while his rivals followed at a distance. Nonetheless, both in the United States and in Italy the ending of the race did not turn out to be as obvious as one might initially think.

What changes is the final result, because in Imola, with a difficult defense, the Dutchman prevailed on the weekend in which, more than any other moment of the season, Red Bull proved to be beatable. Without a doubt, the foundations of this success came from Saturday, from the pole position snatched from the McLarens, because without that first position the race script would have been different. Starting from the front played a key role on several fronts, not only because Imola makes track position a crucial element, but also because it allowed the three-time world champion not to remain in the dirty wake, managing both the pace and the temperatures.

In particular, it is precisely around this last aspect that the differences in pace that were seen during the race revolve, in search of that famous and narrow window of operation that put the three protagonists of the Grand Prix into crisis or gave wings. Award. In Formula 1 everything changes quickly, sometimes even during the same race and, in fact, this event can be divided into two different sections.

Same problems but in a different way

The pole achieved on Saturday, the seventh in a row during this championship, immediately put Verstappen in a position to try to replicate a script seen in other events, attempting to escape to protect himself from the possibility that Norris could exploit the DRS.

If in the first eight laps the gap between the two remained constant under two seconds, from the ninth lap onwards the gap began to widen, also thanks to McLaren’s concerns about the condition of the tyres. Comparing the times, it was precisely in that phase of the race that the Briton suffered most of the gap, because in the space of seven laps the gap more than doubled, widening from two to a full five seconds.

Over the radio, in fact, it was the same Woking team that suggested to Norris to start managing the covers, in particular the rear ones: a detail that emerges clearly also by observing the telemetry references, from which one can see how the English began to manage the tires in the traction phase, such as exiting the Tosa, the Acque Minerali and the Variante Alta.

Norris first stint comparison – Imola 2024

Photo by: Gianluca D’Alessandro

A very interesting detail also emerges here. Norris explained how McLaren had set the car expecting cooler temperatures, especially on the asphalt, which is why it was decided to load the front. However, at the start of the race the temperatures remained similar to those of the previous days, if not even slightly higher, around 45°C for the track. With a car set up to protect the front, McLaren actually faced the opposite effect, suffering a “light” rear with both drivers.

A clear break which, however, was reduced in the subsequent stages, when Verstappen also began to suffer from tire management, so much so that from the sixteenth lap onwards he in turn began to raise his times, experiencing increasingly accentuated understeer. It is in this phase that the various track limit warnings also arrived, precisely because in some corners he began to feel a lack of precision at the front and ended up beyond the white line.

Curiously, the problems were similar to those of McLaren, but also opposite. If the Woking team suffered with the management of the rear tires, on the contrary Verstappen suffered from the progressive deterioration of the front tyres. Consequently, the various management areas at Red Bull were also different, namely the Villeneuve, the Piratella and the entrance to the Acque Minerali, where there is a load transfer associated with perhaps rather significant laterals.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Red Bull’s difficulties on hard and Max’s defence

Given the difficulties and the fact that he felt under pressure from Ferrari pushed McLaren to return with Norris quite early. A move that the Woking team studied carefully, asking the riders more if they would be able to overtake Perez with new tires once they returned to the track. Once they received positive confirmation, McLaren made their move, which protected them from a possible undercut by Leclerc.

However, mindful of the difficulties in the first stint and that it would have been a rather long second part of the race to run on the hard, the engineers immediately suggested a conservative approach, especially in the traction areas, so much so that Norris was again under fire from the Monegasque of the Ferrari. But, once he got behind him, Leclerc encountered difficulties due to following in dirty air, starting to suffer a loss of grip which then led to the error in the Variante Alta. With the tires now overheated, the coupling operation was not repeated later, but this was not the only reason: Norris began to progressively lower his times from lap 44, returning to lap times consistently under 1:20s .

The change of pace was quite marked and was due to two factors. On the one hand, Norris himself explained that in the first part of the stint he didn’t feel great confidence in the tires, but by intervening with the engineers on the various switches, such as the braking distribution and the differential, he found confidence by adjusting some elements from a front end that was too “strong” towards the rear. Furthermore, precisely in that phase of the race the temperatures began to drop, reducing the stress on the rear axle. These two elements allowed Norris to pull ahead of Leclerc, gradually closing the gap on Verstappen.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

On the other hand, the person who suffered this drop in temperatures, both of the asphalt and of the hard tyres, was the Red Bull standard bearer, who in the space of a few laps saw the delta built in the first part of the race progressively thin. Furthermore, Red Bull was one of the few teams not to have tried the harder compound during free practice, thus having no real references in view of the race, unlike McLaren, who had tried it for a long time in FP2 with Piastri.

“When I switched to the hard tyre, maybe not in the first 5-10 laps, but after that I thought I wasn’t sure if that tire would make it to the finish line. They came out of the ideal window, it was like driving on ice, you can feel it when you no longer have grip, like in turn seven”, said Max.

In a defensive situation, Verstappen had to change the way he drove to resist Norris’s assault, with different lines to maximize exit on the straights and maps aimed at recovering energy to exploit on the sprints, in order to have a extra weapon to protect yourself. And it was precisely in those moments that the Dutchman’s coldness came out, because the mistake was just around the corner.

The work carried out on the simulator by Sebastien Buemi between Friday and Saturday to overturn the setup was crucial, but it turned out to be a simple compromise in a complex situation: Verstappen put the rest there. It’s nothing new, but for Red Bull the three-time world champion represents an essential added value.