No F1 Excitement This Weekend as Floods Force Imola Cancel
Round six of the 2023 Formula 1 season, the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, was scheduled to take place at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari – for simplicity the Italian venue is better known as Imola – on Sunday.
For inconvenience, the track suffered a deluge on Tuesday and, with the paddock under water and fears the nearby Santerno River would burst its banks, teams, and staff were ordered to evacuate the venue. With further rain forecast, a schedule change appeared inevitable. Few thought the race meeting would have to be canceled. But, just after noon on Wednesday, the event was pulled by Formula 1.
All attention is on the Red Bull car, but it could soon be the tires – or lack of them – that makes the headlines. ©Mark Thompson/Getty Images
A Change Is as Good as a Pitstop
Wet or dry, fans were set for some excitement as, for the first time, a new qualifying format was due to be trialed. For this weekend, drivers were unable to take a free choice of tires during the qualifying hour. Instead, drivers and teams had to use a hard compound tire for Q1, a medium compound tire for Q2, and soft tires in Q3.
Formula 1 and its tire providers, Pirelli, had declared the change would “improve the environmental sustainability of the sport”. Under the trial, the number of dry tire sets available to each car for the weekend was set to be reduced from 13 to 11. The initiative equates to 160 fewer tires used over a race weekend, and that would reduce the number of tires used during a season by 3,680.
Naysayers believe the change could become a full-time feature purely introduced to make racing more exciting – as qualifying could be more prone to shocks and the number of drivers forced into taking two pitstops during a race will be increased.
A Date Change Will Reduce the Drag
In the belief this weekend’s race will be postponed and not canceled, fans should soon discover if the rule change will have any meaningful effect on what has quickly become an established pecking order.
The Imola circuit is a fast and flowing track that runs anti-clockwise. There is a single DRS zone (drag reduction zone), and while this is one of the longest DRS zones on the calendar, overtaking is always difficult at this venue.
So far in 2023, qualifying on pole position has not been prioritized by the dominant Red Bull team – although Formula 1 betting sites make their drivers default favorites (and they have claimed pole four times). But the team’s car has been superior to its rivals when deploying its DRS.
At a track where passing is challenging, it will be interesting to see how the team chooses to approach this race. The assumption is it will be rescheduled for June 11th between the Spanish and Canadian Grand Prix, or June 25th after Canada and before Austria.
Hope for Monaco Even Without the Upgrades
As for the teams chasing Red Bull, Mercedes and Alfa Romeo were planning to bring upgrades to the Imola circuit. Ferrari has upgrades ready, but the team suggested they would not be brought to Imola. Because of the unique nature of the next venue on the calendar, Monaco, it is now unlikely that any team will make major changes to their cars until the Spanish Grand Prix at the start of June.
Hopefully, rule changes, upgrades, and potential for wet races mean there be some excitement and an outsider will eventually prevail. The most recent contest, the Miami Grand Prix, saw cars strung out like washing on a line, and Red Bull drivers controlled the race from the start.
During 2023, Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen have led 257 race laps. George Russell, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Charles Leclerc are the only other drivers to have led a race this season. They have led for 16 laps …combined! No pressure Monaco, but please, fans clearly need some action!
