The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, the seventh round of the F1 World Championship, has started at the historic Imola circuit with provisional dominance by Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari, but with many scares due to the instability of the track, the wind and the return of porpoising, the rebound effect.
The leader and champion Max Verstappen was one of those who suffered the most from the instability with two off-track runs, in addition to Lewis Hamilton, who had a spin and narrowly avoided the wall.
The first training session was dominated by Leclerc and George Russell’s Mercedes, who took turns in first position in the table. Sainz was third, just 130 thousandths behind his teammate, who had his first track engineer, since Ferrari has dispensed with the Catalan Xavi Marcos, who was the technician assisting the Monegasque.
Fernando Alonso, with numerous technical improvements to his Aston Martin, took tenth place in the first testing session.
The Red Bulls, who were leading the first part of the training session, gave way to the Ferraris. Verstappen reported to his team many grip difficulties in turns 11 and 15, and suffered two off-track runs. Checo Pérez was 4th and the Dutchman was 5th.
