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“Things did not go our way today. Even before the race, we had issues going to the grid and I had to start from the pit lane. That was not too painful because it was a wet start to the race, but the time penalty changed everything, especially because it came 20 minutes into the race. The track conditions were quite difficult in the beginning and it was hard to overtake, but a dry line soon appeared. We gambled on fitting the dry tyres early and, as the track dried more, there was a phase of the race where we were actually quite strong. Then there was the red flag, which was the right decision, and for the restart we chose to fit the soft tyres and gambled on a standing start happening, but they decided on a rolling start. Those soft tyres obviously had higher degradation compared to the medium, which made things more difficult at the end.”

“After an Imola weekend that was challenging from a number of perspectives, Lance’s hugely impressive drive to eighth place, under pressure all the way through, lifted the spirits of everyone in the team. He had gear shift issues throughout, but managed them very capably. Sebastian had a troubled run that ended in a DNF just one lap from the end, which was disappointing for him and the team, but he got a lot of very useful mileage in the car, which is a positive because he is still playing catch-up to some extent as a result of his lack of running in pre-season testing. Both our cars suffered brake overheating problems on the way to the grid, and we are currently investigating the root cause in order to implement a permanent solution.”

Imola is one of seven anti-clockwise tracks on the 2021 calendar. The resulting high incidence of left-handers places additional stress on the front-right tyre. Pirelli brings its C2, C3 and C4 tyres to Imola – the same as Bahrain.

The MGU-K – the motor-generator unit that gathers energy under braking – is almost constantly busy either harvesting or deploying energy around a lap of Imola. In fact, only Monza is more intensive.