Lewis Hamilton waves to the crowd.
Sending the Imola crowd wild with an overtake on Sergio Perez, Lewis Hamilton thinks they were very excited by that rare sight.
While Max Verstappen bounced back from struggles earlier in the Emilia Romagna GP weekend to claim pole, Sergio Perez in the other Red Bull missed the Q3 cut, leaving him with major work to do – at a track where overtaking is far from easy – if he was to recover to a strong points-scoring position.
Lewis Hamilton delights Imola fans with rare Red Bull overtake
Additional reporting by Pablo Hidalgo
Perez attempted to prolong his opening stint on the hard tyre, but it was inevitable that he couldn’t keep Hamilton behind for too long. To the crowd’s delight, the Mercedes driver skillfully overtook Perez on the outside into Tamburello.
Hamilton believes that the reason why the overtake was so well-received during his last race at Imola before joining Ferrari in 2025 is due to Red Bull’s dominant performance in Formula 1’s ground effect era.
Hamilton informed DAZN F1 that he presumed their enthusiasm stemmed from the rarity of witnessing a Red Bull being overtaken.
“The support from the fans has been truly incredible. It feels surreal to witness Italian fans being aware of my future plans. The upcoming year is bound to be absolutely wild.”
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However, before that, Hamilton must complete his final season with Mercedes, which is proving to be a challenging task for both the team and the driver.
Mercedes unveiled additional enhancements for their W15 car at Imola. However, Red Bull’s Verstappen, along with the McLarens and Ferraris, remained out of Mercedes’ league. These four teams have now made their initial moves in the F1 2024 development battle.
Hamilton expressed that he had not anticipated achieving anything beyond his own position of finishing P6, along with his teammate George Russell who finished P7.
Hamilton confirmed, “It met our expectations, yielding solid points. However, it falls short of our desired position.”
“Up until now in the season, these guys are still significantly leading us. The improvements made by McLaren have been remarkably powerful.”
Perez, on the other hand, had to accept P8 and finished the race seven-and-a-half seconds behind Russell. He expressed his disappointment with the narrow Imola track, stating that it is not suitable for modern F1 racing.
“I believe we could have narrowed the gap with Mercedes and applied more pressure on them,” he shared with DAZN F1. “It would have been extremely challenging to surpass our performance.”
In my opinion, this track is unsuitable for Formula 1 racing. The cars we have and the shortened DRS zone this season made it extremely challenging to overtake. It required a significant tire advantage to make any progress. Unfortunately, our weekend was already doomed with a P11 qualification.
“We managed to rejoin the battle, albeit with a significant distance between me and Hamilton. Unfortunately, I fell considerably behind the drivers ahead, losing substantial ground.”
That result cost Perez his P2 spot in the Drivers’ Championship, which is now occupied by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc who has established a six-point advantage over the Red Bull driver.
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