The Late Braking F1 Podcast - 2025 Imola GP Qualifying Review

Episode Date: May 17, 2025

Drama, chaos, surprises. 2025 Imola qualifying had it all! Ben breaks down a wild session packed with joy for Piastri, a front-row for Verstappen, a stunning turnaround for Aston Martin, and yet more heartbreak for Ferrari fans. FOLLOW us on socials! You can find us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X (Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ SUPPORT our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for bonus episodes JOIN our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ community JOIN our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠F1 Fantasy League⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ EMAIL us at [e-mail]   & SUBSCRIBE to our podcast! TIDE: Save more, earn more—up to 4.22% AER (variable). Interest rates are tiered, with the top rate for balances over £1M. Each tiered rate applies to the portion within that range. New Tide members get these rates free for 6 months; after that, your Tide plan’s rates apply. For full offer T&Cs visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tide.co/savings⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network. Thank you for listening to the Late Breaking F1 podcast. Make sure to check out new episodes every Wednesday and every Sunday. Welcome to the late breaking F1 podcast presented by me, Ben Hocking, reviewing today, qualifying at Imala, or at least trying to. A lot happened. A lot happened in, well, I was going to say an hour because that's usually how long qualifying takes,

but there's a good chance that this qualifying session will be longer than the race that we have tomorrow. It's so long. Sam was supposed to join me on this. I hate to break the... He's died of old age. Like, that's how long that qualifying session was. It's been a while since I've done a solo review.

So do bear with me, folks. Again, there's a lot to get through. Surprises, crashes, a double Aster Martin Q3. I can't quite believe I just said those words. it happened. Unless it's going to be an interesting review. We'll start out front because that's the bit that probably makes the most sense. McLaren this time of Oscar Piastri taking pole ahead of Max Verstappen,

but a close run thing, less than half a temp for ultimately separating the two drivers. Oscar Piastri, man, he just goes from strength to strength. I have to start with how impressed I was by what Piastri was able to deliver because it would have been very easy for that all to have crumbled. He was the first driver to go out there on a second run. He, like Verstappen, opted for the soft tire. And that was an interesting debate as to whether to go for soft tires or medium tires.

And we'll get into that a little bit more as this review goes on. It's not normally a talking point. But Piastri goes for the soft tire. First one out there. Understandable, given we'd already had a couple of crashes in this qualifying session. you want to get that lap on the board as soon as possible. But that does increase the risk that at the end of your lap, you might come a cropper with some traffic.

And we had multiple drivers who left it very late in the session before crossing that line and getting their second runs going. All of this meant that Piastri met traffic as he was going through that third sector. Of all places on the F1 calendar, not an ideal place to find traffic. is narrow there. You have to be absolutely on it. There is grass. There is gravel at pretty much every turn. And what was looking like a very good lap from Piastri, suddenly there was danger that that would be all undone. His middle sector was phenomenal. Certainly going through practice and the early parts of qualifying, Piastri looked as he normally does, like a good

bet to be on the front row of the grid. And the question for both McLaren's versus Vestappen was going to be how much would they be able to claw back from what they would probably lose in the first sector? That's exactly how it went. Vestappen was, as he was in final practice earlier today, very good in that first sector. So for Piastri, after one sector, to be only half a tenth behind Vastappen, didn't look good on paper because it was Vastappen that was clear at that time, but in reality was a good sign for a Piastri pole because he nailed the middle sector and then kept the tires alive enough in that final sector, despite the distractions. It wasn't the ideal lap time, probably because of that traffic.

He didn't produce his best final sector, but he did enough. And that's kind of the story of Piastri season to this point, is he keeps doing enough. And it's already been wax lyrical about how important pole position is on a weekend like Imala, where overtaking is very difficult. Piahtri will be not only delighted that he's got pole position ahead of Vastappen here, who very much would have fancied his chances of spoiling that McLaren party, but then also to have another car between himself and his nearest championship rival, of course, his teammate Lando Norris, this session can't have gone much better for him.

All three of us have spoken all year long about how impressed we've been by what Piaastri has been able to deliver so far this season. And this was just another chapter in that. So well done to him. So long run down to turn one, something that we focused on quite a bit in the preview. So it's no guarantee that he is going to be leading the field coming out of turn two.

It's turn one, but it's actually turn two. So given Vestappen has also been slightly dodgy on his start so far this year. So great work from Piastri. Max Vostappen as well deserves a lot of praise. Certainly going into qualifying. it seemed like the debate over poll was going to be the two McLarence versus Vastappan. Those three drivers looked to be fairly clear of the rest of the field. And the fact that they weren't and George Russell was in there,

we'll get onto him in a moment, but that deserves a lot of credit. Because coming out of practice, it very much looked like it was going to be one of these three. And as mentioned, Vastappen, much like Miami actually, looked phenomenal in that first sector. and it was going to be a question of Red Bull and Vostappen, could they hold on to the tires long enough into the lap to maintain that advantage? The answer was not quite, but he gave it a hell of a go. He spoke in his interview after qualifying about how the tires did seem to lose a little bit, and it was small margins, but seemed to lose a little bit as the lap went on.

And ultimately, that does raise the question. And I think Vastappen might have been indirectly raising this question as well, should he have been on the medium tire? There certainly was a strategic element to not going on the medium tires. It's something that will directly impact the Grand Prix tomorrow. Not anyone other than Aston Martin was able to have the wear-wivel to save multiple sets of medium tires going into this qualifying session. But how important would that poll position have been?

It's tough to say, as commentary regularly, made the point. It seems very alien to go at a qualifying session without the softest compound available to you. Yet multiple drivers on the day decided, as kind of looked like would be the case throughout practice, these medium tires might be just as quick, if not quicker. They've got a better chance of, you know, standing up at the end of the lap. And that's where Vostappan and Red Bull ultimately struggled. It was still a phenomenal lap from Vastappen, definitely worthy of a front row start. Whether they should have gone for the medium tire or not, it's difficult to say.

It seemed like the top three were unwilling to go overly risky on that strategy. And then we get to the second row of the grid, because as mentioned, going into this qualifying session, I thought this was going to be quite clearly three drivers in contention for pole. And it was going to be the two McLaurids and Max Verstappen. I did not, even throughout practice, when Carlos Sein set the fastest lap in Q2, I didn't think another driver was going to quite get into that mix. George Russell proved that wrong.

And he proved it wrong twice because his first lap on the soft tire was there or thereabouts as well. And he didn't nail that lap either. We saw him have a bit of a moment in the middle sector. He does the first lap on the soft tires, at which point I was fairly impressed, It looked like in practice that he was going to be, I figured going into this session, he'd wrap up a comfortable fourth,

as he's kind of done a few times so far this year, not quite having the ultimate pace to challenge the top three, but equally having the quality to, you know, beat his, maybe beat his teammate, beat the Ferrari, he's beat the Williams drivers. And the fact that he got in that fight, the fact that he got in the fight was one thing. The fact that he was then able to beat one of those three drivers,

I was pretty impressed what he was able to, liver. To be only just over a 10th back of Oscar Piastri and to be pretty much dead on, one 10th back of Max Verstappen, that's a competitive lap time. And Mercedes, I think their race pace looked a little bit better than their qualifying pace did as we went throughout practice. So that will give them reason to be encouraged as we go into the race on Sunday. It seems like as well, that car is pretty good in the first sector. And it's actually the last sector that they seem to be struggling the most in. Certainly going into the session, I thought that they were going to be a few temps off in that final sector. But of course, with the way that final sector works,

there's no overtaking opportunity there. So if you can afford to be slow where no one's going to pass you, that could well pay dividends going into the Grand Prix. So much like the staff, much like Piastri. I was very impressed with what George Russell was able to deliver. And then that leaves us with Lando Norris to round out the front two rows. And unfortunately, I sound a bit like a broken record as we go throughout this season. Lando Norris not able to capitalize on the pace that he has going into the final part of a qualifying session. Now, it could have been far more disastrous than this. And indeed, it has been more disastrous than this. Bahrain was a far worse qualifying effort.

We saw Saudi Arabia, where of course, he crashed and didn't set a lap whatsoever. This was not that. This was better. And he still set a reasonable lap time. But to be just under three temps back of your teammate that you are directly challenging for the championship, that ain't going to cut it, really at any circuit, let alone Imola. We don't have the guarantee that Miami and Imola are going to be the same in terms of, number one, how easy it is to make overtakes happen.

And number two, whether McLaren will hold that race pace advantage like they did in Miami. Now, in fairness, with Miami, it wasn't a case of he'd qualified out of position and needed to recover. Instead, it was that first lap incident with Vostappen that saw him needing to make up some ground. But he was able to get rid of cars pretty easily, even the likes of the Mercedes. It was only the Stappan that he was challenged by a little bit more. We don't know if that's going to be the case tomorrow if he doesn't get a good start to this race. If he does need to overtake two or three cars to get up to second place, it might take him longer. And even if he does manage to make the same progress that we saw in Miami, there's no telling

how much of a gap he Astri might be able to pull at the front. we saw that was essentially the decider in Miami was the seconds that Piastri was able to build over Norris whilst he was stuck behind Vastappen. We might get the same thing again. It's entirely plausible. And Lano Norris, it's not like he didn't have the pace to certainly be third, second or indeed first. Like coming out of third practice earlier today, he didn't have the fastest lap time in third practice, In terms of the ideal lap, you're putting together the best first sector,

best second sector and best third sector that you've done during the session, he was ahead of both Vastappan and Piastri. He was ironically the one who was able to hook up the end of the lap in a way that Vastepin and Piastri didn't quite manage. Norris was about, he was over two temps clear of Piastri in the final sector in the last part of practice. what we saw unfold, at least in terms of the second run in Q3, was kind of the opposite of that.

Norris's first sector was pretty reasonable, and it was only in the middle and final sector that it really started to become unstuck. And again, this was in direct, you know, this was directly the opposite of what had happened earlier in the day. And it just shows how important, again, keeping those tires alive for the entirety of the lap with these very soft tires that they brought this weekend. How important that is, because it's definitely cost him at least one position here.

If Norris just sets his ideal lap from FP3 with no improvement, which is, of course, is pretty rare, no improvement whatsoever from that session to qualifying, if he does that, he's third. And again, he only needs to improve by another attempt to get second or first away from Vastappen and Piastri, but it's a bit of a repeated tale where he isn't cutting it at the final part of qualifying. How much that will cost him will likely depend on his start. If he can get George Russell off the line and enter turn two in third, that will limit the damage. If he is stuck behind Vastappan and Russell after the first lap, it might be a trickier afternoon. Let's go to a couple of other teams that made it through to

Q3. So as expected going into this session, Ferrari, no cars in Q3, Red Bull, just one, Mercedes just one. So who else alongside McLaren would have two cars in Q3? Of course, the answer to that question was always going to be, checks notes, Williams and Aston Martin. So that happened. I want to start with Williams because that's the one I'm not actually surprised about,

which is great news for Williams that they both made it through to Q3, and I'm not shocked. If anything, and this is crazy to say, 6th and 7th, based on Alonzo being 5th, they might be slightly disappointed. Carlos Seins in particular looked really quick throughout all of today. So he had the fourth best ideal lap time from FP3. So there was a real belief, I think, from Williams that they could challenge in terms of one lap pace, maybe in terms of race pace, I don't know, but in terms of one lap pace that they could challenge Mercedes and Ferrari.

And indeed they did. The lap that signs set at the end of FP2 was highly impressive, so impressive in fact that it has led to him qualifying in 6th in Q3 and out qualifying his teammate. Yet I'm feeling a touch disappointed that he's only seen. I'm not sure he ever would have got up to the top four, but he could have very easily gone in the gap between Norris and Alonso, which is about half a second or so, four and a half tens. If Sines had replicated his Q2 lap in Q3, he would have been fifth. Like, he didn't need to improve whatsoever and what he did in Q2.

I think, in fairness to him, firstly, it was 1,000th of a second that separated him in Alonzo, so it's not a big margin. And secondly, I think he was one of those drivers to, the end of Q3 that was really struggling to get a lap time in. The last few cars in that queue in the pit lane, as soon as they were going down the pit lane and I saw the time, I was a bit about whether one or two wouldn't make it. Now, ultimately, they all did, but I wouldn't be surprised if Sines' tire warm-up was affected by going out so late.

And that's, again, why I give so much credit to what George Russell did today, because he was also in that spot. He only crossed the line with like three seconds to go and still nailed the lap. So for Carlos Sines, it's still a great lap. He's still on the top three rows. Maybe just slight disappointment. It's not fifth. Alex Alburn, on the other hand, I think he was always at a disadvantage with Carlos Sines today. It seemed like for whatever reason this weekend, it's signs that is the faster of the two. So to be within half a tenth of signs, isn't too bad. That's pretty respectable. There'll be a longer. inside each other on the grid. And again, you've got multiple teams, you've got Red Bull,

you've got Mercedes, you've got Ferrari, who haven't been able to string together two drivers in competitive spots. And if they just hold positions tomorrow, that's 14 points. That's highly valuable for the championship attempt, particularly now they are starting to draw attention away from this season and focus on next season. We know that that's their priority. If they can bag some some big scoring points as they've kind of done already with Miami and with Saudi Arabia as well to an extent. If they can do that here and maybe a Monaco, they'll have a bit of a buffer to work with for the rest of this season. So on a track, again, that is difficult to overtake, sixth and seventh is a very respectable result, as is fifth and eighth for Aston Martin.

Fernando Alonzo P5, Landstrol, P8. It looked a bit more encouraging going into qualifying. Not this encouraging. So they brought quite a significant upgrade package for this weekend, but hey, they were upgrading a green toaster. So it was always going to be, you know, they could have upgraded quite significantly and still been at eight fastest or so. But they seem to have done a really good job here. Fernando Alonzo in FP3 looked like he might be able to at least lead the back group.

So Has, Salber, maybe racing balls, or at least the long. racing balls are lorson you throw in there as well the alpine drivers it looked like he might be a fringe contender for the top 10 and that's exactly what he did he was able to convert on that what i'm perhaps a little bit more surprised about is the fact that stroll's with him because stroll wasn't showing that same pace but both of them absolutely pulled it out the bag when they needed to firstly in q2 and then secondly somewhat in q3 as well i mean alonzo has nailed that session Strull is only a tenth and a half back in Q3, and he's outqualified, Hadjar and Pierre Gasly.

So this team that has really struggled to make any Q3 impression so far this year suddenly has two drivers in the mix. And again, there's a reasonable chance. Maybe they can't hold on to these exact positions, but I wouldn't expect them to sink like a stone outside the top 10 very quickly. There is every chance that they'll hold on at least to some of these spots with how difficult it is to pass. The key for them, similar to, I guess, Red Bull and Vastappen, the question was going to be based

on their pace, could they hold on until the end of the lap? Because the first and middle sectors looked pretty good, but where they were really losing time throughout practice was the final sector. And so it was an outstanding question. Could they nail a sector three and pull off a bit of a miracle? yes, yes is the answer to that question. Great effort from both of them. I know Alonzo's qualified to stroll by a few spots,

but I think both of them deserve their flowers on this one. And if this is a sign of things to come, then suddenly they might be able to at least get back to where they were maybe at the beginning of last season before we head into new regulations next year. Well, that's going to do it. That's a lot of positivity for one second. So here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to grab some water and then I'm going to laugh at Ferrari and that's coming up right after this. Welcome back, everyone. McLaren. Yes, you have managed to get a car into Q3. Well done. Red Bull.

Yep, yep, well done. Yeah, Mercedes, yeah, good job. Aston Martin, two of you. Well done, yeah. Williams, two more. Racing Bulls, yeah, you've got a car in there. Well done, Isaac. Pierre, yeah, good job.

Good job. Look quick throughout the, First couple of practice sessions, you managed to get there to, um, oh, does anyone see any Ferraris? No, you don't. 11th and 12th for Charles LeClair and Lewis Hamilton, respectively. Do you know what the worst thing about this 11th and 12th for Ferrari is? Actually, there's a lot of answers to that. But one of the worst things about this 11th and 12 finish, I'm not that shocked.

I'm surprised. Don't get me wrong. I'm surprised. I thought that they would be able to squeak into Q3, but I didn't think they would ever be in a conversation for poll. I'm not that shocked. We saw at Miami, Williams and Ferrari were very similarly paced. And they were essentially the fourth and fifth fastest teams. If you're the fourth fastest team, your ceiling is about seventh place. If you are the fifth fastest team, you are maybe just getting. getting into Q3, meaning your margin of error is incredibly small and you could well be out in Q2 instead. I thought going into this session, there'll be somewhere between 7th and 12th. Now, sure, they've landed at the very bottom of that prediction, which is a surprise, but it's not a shock.

I really think going into this session, given how close this field is, and I'll throw Antonelli in here as well, if any of these, you know, McLaren, any of these Mercedes or Ferraris, if they don't deliver a lap, Sonoda, I guess, would have been in this conversation as well. If they don't deliver a lap, they have the potential be knocked out by the likes of the Williams, by the likes of Pierre Ghazley, Hadjar has been consistently performing well and qualifying all year, maybe a bit more of a shock that it's Aston Martin in that conversation as well. But again, at their home race, where they have not performed well all year, where people have left the stands after Q2,

and in fairness, they probably just needed to get home because it had been 12 years by that point. But all of that to happen, 11th and 12th, I'm just not that surprised. Also, we don't normally talk about bold predictions in terms of qualifying reviews. My bold prediction midweek was that Ferrari would score

six points or fewer this weekend. Felt bold. I feel good about it right now and it's going to really annoy me this time tomorrow when it's wrong for some stupid reason. But at least for now, I'm slightly happy about it,

which makes me incredibly nervous. Charles LeClaire's reaction said it all, right? Charles LeClaire, I don't even think it was disbelief. It was just, what are we doing? What are we doing that 11th and 12th feels like where the car actually is. If you have,

Charles LeCler, one of the best qualifiers of this century, alongside Lewis Hamilton, the man who has more pole positions than anyone, in history, if you've got those two drivers in your car, and they are next to each other on the grid in 11th and 12th,

I am inclined to believe that's where the pace of that car is. You know, if LeClaire is qualifying 6th and Hamilton's qualifying 12th, and maybe you can say that car has what LeCleur showed, therefore Hamilton's underperformed. Nope, here they are alongside each other. And indeed, that's what it looked like it was going to be throughout most of the weekend, is that they would be in this fight.

And the margins were so slim at the end of Q2. I haven't got the exact time that LeClair and Hamilton were outside of not only the time to proceed, but the time from them to Carlos Sainting first was not a lot, but they weren't able to deliver. Lewis Hamilton perplexed saying, I just couldn't improve. And he, you know, his first run was quicker than his second run. Charles LeCler, again,

someone who is routinely fighting at the front when he's got an opportunity, not even able to make it through to the fastest part of qualifying. They could have picked a better weekend than this to have a qualifying, Blunder. Like if you're going to pick a bad weekend to qualify, pick Monza. You know, pick Baku. Pick a track where you might be able to make all of those spots back. I don't know.

Maybe they make some of these spots back, but it wouldn't surprise me if they're eighth and ninth tomorrow, not even a little bit. Sorry, state of affairs for Ferrari, given where they ended last season. This was just, you know, the next story. of this really disappointing 2025. I'll throw Antonelli in the same conversation because after what was a very encouraging weekend, qualifying-wise, at Miami,

he has not been able to deliver here his first home race. I wasn't surprised and then was surprised and then wasn't surprised again because it didn't look like he had the pace of George Russell. He really struggled on Friday. And I figured that he would probably find some of that time as we got into Saturday. And he did.

He actually set a very good lap time towards the end of free practice three, making me think that, okay, disaster averted. He'll probably make the top 10. Even if he doesn't make much of an impression in the top 10, he should find himself there. Not to be. Not to be. We are seeing a bit of inconsistency from Antonelli so far this year. He is scoring regular points.

It remains to be seen whether he can get back in the points from 13th tomorrow. But in terms of qualifying attempts, again, we saw him get pole position in the spring, qualifying in Miami. And he was very competitive in the main quality as well. He was within one tenth of pole. Here, not even close. There's also other things to talk about that happening. Q1 and Q2.

Q1 lasted for an hour, or at least like we didn't get Q2 underway after an hour of racing. Let's go straight into what caused that delay, which initially was the Franco-Colopinto crash. Shouldn't be overly surprised, I guess, at what is a track where you need to be 100% committed, but also if something goes slightly,

wrong, it usually goes very wrong at Imola. For a guy returning to F1, his first weekend back, who was already known a little bit as someone who is prone to a crash or two, he had significant ones last year at the likes of Las Vegas and Brazil, it's not overly surprising to see him be one of the couple of drivers that took things a little bit too far and had that heavy crash, just going too fast into the first chican. He always looked like he was scrambling a little bit to find the time of his teammate,

which again is perfectly understandable going into your first weekend. It looked like the gap between Gasly and Colopinto was going to average out at about maybe half a second, four attempts at best. You could argue that maybe he should just accept that almost and not push the car too much, but that's not in a racing driver's DNA.

crashes quite heavily, brings out the red flag. But when? But when did he bring out the red flag? Seemed to be the question that everyone was asking for about 20 minutes because Olly Berman, at least initially on our timing screen, set a lap that was fast enough to make it into the top 15 and therefore Demote Gabriel Bortoletto, who had already set his lap, down to 16th and out along with his teammate.

And then the time disappeared. And what ensued, presumably, was an FIA investigation as to whether he had crossed the line in time. And it looked to be very close indeed. Plenty of cameras on Berman going up to the line and whether the red flag was out or whether the checkered flag came first. Did he cross the line? This is going to sound really awful. but I don't care.

Just make the call. Like, whatever your reasoning is, whether your reasoning is, as soon as we call the red flag, that's the session over. If there's a temp or two delay in the time between us calling it and the red flags

or the red signs making an appearance, the red lights making an appearance, regardless of what your policy is, just make it so a call can be made straight away. We had no idea. no communication whatsoever, just waiting. And when I say we, I'm talking about myself, I'm talking about all of you. I'm also talking about Olly Behrman and Gabriel Bortoletto. Behrman is sat in his car waiting to see. Bortoletto and Salberg decide, you know what, we're just going to take off down

the pit lane, which I've never admired stake more than I did in that moment. Who's right and who's wrong? I don't know. I honestly don't know. But, just make a call and stick to it and make it in a timely fashion. It's actually a really simple one. You get the red flag out. You decide whether he's made the lap or not. You make the call. Now, Behrman and Haas might turn around and say, well, we should have made it because the red flag, we didn't see it. And Salba might turn around and say yes, but you've got to go from the point that you called it, not the point that it started to show. Again, I don't care which one you go for.

Just make sure we're not sat around for 20 minutes. Like, I love F1. I'd probably be sat around for three hours waiting for Q2 if that's how long it took. But not everyone is as sad as me. Like a lot of people, fringe fans, people who aren't as bigger fans, might well have turned off at that point.

Is that what we really want to do just based on procedural nonsense? Make the call. That wasn't the only crash we had as well, although it didn't bring about as much of a delay. The crash of Yuki Sonoda to really begin FP1, he's only had like five races, and it feels like he's starting to become under pressure.

That second seat does seem to be cursed. Sonoda, there seems to be something relating to the pressure of Vestappen that is letting these young drivers down. It didn't look like he was, going to be much of a factor in this qualifying session anyway, Yuki Sinoda, because it looked like he was a long way off for Stappen. Honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised if he was knocked out in Q1 on pace. And if I was putting money on it, I would have said he would have been knocked out in Q2 on pace. I didn't think he was getting through to the top 10 based on everything I had seen

up until this point. He was losing multiple 10ths to Vestappen per sector. You know, sometimes when you review the practice data or you're looking at the early qualifying data, you're looking to see if there's one specific area a driver is struggling in to work out whether it is easily redeemable. Because if one driver is struggling in one sector, that can often be one fix. But when you are struggling everywhere, which was the case of Sonoda, like a couple attempts down in the first sector, a couple attempts down in the second sector, there's much less you can do about that because it's just your pace isn't on it compared to your teammate.

He might have been struggling anyway. As it happens, we won't even have that debate because of the heavy crash. It is wonderful to see that he walked away from this because it was a really brutal crash. Of course, we only saw the tail end of it initially, which was the car upright facing the, well,

facing the right direction, but at least being upright. And then, of course, we see what actually happened leading up to that. So it's, the most important thing is he's,

he's okay. And he was able to walk away from this quite comfortably, which speaks volumes to the development that we've had in safety in F1. But what is he going to be able to do from 20th? he might well start in the pit lane whether they need to or not is another question but they might just want him to

in order to make any changes to the car that they need to. They obviously won't really lose anything apart from the opportunity to make up a few spots going into term one. But even if he had Max Verstappen-Light pace, it will be tricky to go through the field. The fact is he doesn't.

And I would be shocked if the race unfolded in a way that got him into the points. Last team to get a mention here today is the V-Car bracing Bulls team. A difficult one to judge because Lawson was knocked out in Q1, Hadjar made it through to Q3. I didn't really make much of a deal of Hadjar getting 9th, which is a good sign because it's a good effort. He's made it through to the final part of qualifying.

He's out-qualified. Mercedes. He's out-qualified two Ferraris. But the reason I don't make a big deal out of it is because it's becoming a bit more of the norm. He is performing routinely well in these qualifying sessions. Liam Lawson, less so. On the one hand, he was directly impacted by everything that occurred in FP1, in Q1, perhaps more than other drivers were. I think his last lap was interrupted did for example. So whereas the likes of Gabriel Bortoletto had got a lap in before the red flag made an appearance, I don't think Liam Lawson did.

It's not like Gabriel Bortoletto and Salba were showing a great deal of pace. So if he sets a lap time, I think he might well make it out. Equally, though, he hasn't really displayed the pace of Hager all weekend. There has been routinely a few temp separating them at the very least. If he had made it through to Q2, my instinct is he wouldn't have made it. any further. He seems to be struggling a little bit versus his teammate and he needs to find something.

Of course, Lawson weirdly less experienced with the team this year, but more experienced overall. We've got this triple header coming up. Again, from 16th, it's going to be difficult for him to do anything in terms of points tomorrow. But he needs to find a bit of a rhythm

in terms of race pace. We'll see whether he can do that. I'll close out this review very quickly with my driver of the session. As impressive as the Piastri Poll app was, as impressive as George Russell's third place was as well. Stappen very good. I have to go Fernando Alonzo. He's fifth. Again, he's fifth.

Sure. Also, he will score no points tomorrow because that's Fernando Alonzo in 2025. I don't know how he's going to find a way to score no points and Landstrol will somehow be on the podium. When that becomes true, that will be quite funny. But in terms of his qualifying attempt, to get through to Q3, to utilise that medium strategy as well as he did. And the team gets credit for that as well. I thought going into this session, more teams might try this medium tire. They save the set.

They're the ones that managed to make this work. Great effort. he gets my driver of the session. Well, fortunately for me, my voice and all of your ears, tomorrow's session will not be a solo record from me. I will have friends again. Yay. And of course, we will review everything that happens in the Imola Grand Prix.

Thank you very much for joining me on today's episode. If you'd like more of late breaking, you know exactly what to do. The Discord link is in the description. and if you'd like to become a member of our Patreon where we have a lot of additional content including power rankings that we'll be doing after this weekend concludes, make sure you follow the link

and all of the available tiers will be there in front of you. But at least until this time tomorrow, I've been Ben Hocking. Keep breaking late. Podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.