Red Bull chief Helmut Marko couldn’t help but make light of former world champion Lewis Hamilton’s struggles this season after another forgettable performance at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
The British star was lapped by Max Verstappen, who logged the fastest lap and picked up his second win of the season while leading teammate Sergio Pérez to the first one-two Red Bull finish since Malaysia in 2016.
Hamilton finished 13th, with Mercedes head Toto Wolff apologising to the star over the radio for the “undriveable” car he was given in Italy.
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Hamilton is now seventh in the driver’s standings and finds himself a whopping 58 points behind leader Charles Leclerc.
Yet difficulties with the car won’t spare Hamilton from criticism, with Marko poking fun at Hamilton’s misfortune by suggesting he should have called it quits.
“I mean, he was lapped by us,” Marko told Sky Sports News. “Maybe he is thinking he should have stopped last year!”
A dominant victory from Verstappen saw the reigning F1 champion almost halve the gap in the standings to Leclerc.
Leclerc could have minimised his losses but a rare mistake from the Ferrari driver cost him a chance for third place — behind Verstappen and Red Bull teammate Sergio Pérez — and meant he ended up sixth.
“I was too greedy and I paid the price for it and lost seven potential points,” Leclerc said. “It is a shame, it is seven points that are valuable at the end of the championship for sure and this shouldn’t happen again.”
Verstappen also won the sprint race to pick up maximum points at Imola and cut his gap to Leclerc from 46 points to 27.
More ominously for Ferrari, the Red Bulls looked very fast indeed after making several upgrades going into the weekend in Italy.
“Only time will tell how much of a step they did but for sure they seem to be more competitive than the first three races, or similar to Jeddah,” Leclerc said. “We’ve had the upper hand in Bahrain and Australia, and they’ve had the upper hand in this weekend and in Jeddah.
“It is very, very close, and I think it will be that way for the rest of the season and that is why every small mistake … it’s a big mistake but actually the consequence considering the mistake could have been much bigger.”
Red Bull’s first one-two since 2016 was a big statement of intent from the team, especially after a frustrating start to the season. Verstappen had two DNFs in the opening three races, while Pérez also failed to finish the season opener.
“It’s just what we needed to rebound from Australia. It’s a long season and we’ll take a lot of confidence from this result and try to build on it in Miami in a couple of weeks’ time,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said.
“To come here, we attacked the weekend, we brought a little upgrade — a lot of people said, ‘you shouldn’t do that with only one practice session.’ We believed in ourselves, and it paid off.”
Just how much it has paid off will have to be seen, especially with Ferrari set to bring in upgrades of their own. That adds to the excitement building ahead of the inaugural Miami GP on May 8, in what Verstappen conceded could be “very different” on a track designed to improve the racing spectacle.
“Of course we are disappointed as we wanted a better result than this in front of all our fans,” Ferrari team principal Matteo Binotto said. “It was a difficult race. Now we look forward to Miami and a new track, which makes it an even more compelling prospect.”
One person not excited about Miami is Hamilton, who conceded he is already out of the championship race.
“I’m not particularly looking forward to it at the moment,” he said about Miami. “I’m sure in the week I’ll get to a positive frame of mind. I will be at the factory tomorrow to see what we can improve.
“This weekend, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We live and we learn, and there’s not much else to say. I’ll keep working as hard as I can to try and pull it back together, somehow.”
Hamilton, F1’s record holder with 103 wins and 103 poles, lost out on a record eighth world title on the last lap of the last race of last season.
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