While McLaren have clearly had the quickest car on average over the start of the season, Red Bull and Max Verstappen have made a line in the sand with his dominant victory in Imola. Besting both the McLarens of Lando Norris, and Oscar Piastri who started the race from pole position.

Piastri only managed to lead a couple of hundred metres of the race in the end, surrendering the lead to Verstappen at the first corner. A brilliant move from Verstappen for sure but certainly avoidable with more heads up driving from the McLaren driver, and George Russell who watched it all unfold in front of him from P3 was quick to display his irritation on the radio.

Nevertheless, the Dutchman never looked back after securing the lead, and although many would have expected Piastri to then go and hunt down the Red Bull driver, the chase never really began. In fact Verstappen only increased his lead, and had enough pace in hand to cover off any threat from McLaren in the latter stages of the race.

The pace demonstrated by Verstappen in the race at Imola will certainly have concerned McLaren. With the Spain technical directive rapidly approaching that will potentially peg back teams that rely heavily on aero-elasticity in their front wings, McLaren being a key player here.

Another reoccurring theme that was the case again in Italy was McLaren’s lack of decisiveness in strategy and dealing with their drivers. Although the chance was slim for Norris to put any pressure on Verstappen given the Red Bull’s pace, inverting the cars at the restart after the final safety car seemed like a no brainer. This time there was no change in the result but the two McLaren teammates fighting not only put to bed any slim chance of the win, but also brought cars behind into play. If not for an unusually lengthy safety car period to clear Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton might just have been in range to snatch the final podium place from Piastri, which I imagine would have left quite a few faces on the McLaren pit wall just as red as that Ferrari.

Verstappen’s pace and consistency is relentless and after stating the handling of his RB21 was the best he’s felt all season after finishing the race, a momentum shift in the championship could be developing. Verstappen once again through no fault of his own is fighting by himself at the front. Tsunoda has had flashes of good pace in practice and qualifying sessions but poor execution in Q3 has often left him at the back end of the top ten. Although having two cars up front could give Red Bull more options in the races, the lack of teammate drama can only ever really be an advantage, just look at the Miami Grand Prix where Ferrari made a complete mess of the strategy, and that was just for a P7 not a win or a championship.

Verstappen’s deficit of only twenty-two points to current championship leader Oscar Piastri will not be comfortable at all for the Australian driver or McLaren, and both will have to step up their game if they are serious about making a run for the title.

McLaren will likely be playing defence for the rest of this season and in my opinion, it’s very hard to bet against Max Verstappen when he’s the one on offence.

Header Image by Steffen Prößdorf, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons