Max Verstappen WINS the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix as Red Bull star fends off last-gasp charge from Lando Norris to secure his fifth victory of the season

Imola is a grand old track but this Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was exciting as a tax return until one iridescent late scare delivered a possible harbinger of an exciting season ahead. 

Max Verstappen won it, but nobody has to be told that. What they need to know is that his pal Lando Norris was as hot down his neck as a dragon.

We came here to northern Italy hoping that McLaren might take the fight to them, that Norris’s maiden win in Miami would represent a growing threat to a Dutch monopoly. 

It certainly now looks as if they do – they being the team that best understands the principles of the technical regulations. Yes, the Red Bull in the hands of a maestro remains in front, but only just, by fractions of a second.

That closeness was not much evident early on. Verstappen, starting on pole, was cleanly away, having pointed his cars aggressively towards the racing line and Norris, next to him on the front row. 

The world champion held his advantage through the opening chicane – Tamburello, the now reconfigured spot at which Ayrton Senna lost his life 30 years ago, and the die was cast. That likely fact was hammered into Norris: Verstappen’s lead at the end of lap one stood at eight-tenths seemingly like a ticking timebomb.

By lap six, the margin was two seconds. By lap 12, three seconds. By lap 20, six.

Verstappen’s only wobbles were minor at this stage. He hit the odd kerb too heavily, once going fractionally airborne. And he pushed his luck by exceeding track limits – a habit that landed him a black-and-white warning flag. Other than that, no problems at all – not yet.

It seemed clear that this so-far boring race would conclude with Norris condemned to finish a miserable second, but that is not nothing like how it transpired in sapping 25C heat. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc came home third – where he had started, which uniformity suited the early somnolent fare.

But the event came to life at the death. Could Lando Norris pull off a late heist? Could he pass Verstappen in the final throes to breathe life into a campaign that minutes earlier had looked as dead as a dodo.

From six seconds back with a handful of laps remaining, the British star pressed and pressed his McLaren in pursuit of a car that has carried Max the Machine to the stars. Norris gobbled the road in front of him until he was just 1.5sec back with five laps remaining.

Verstappen’s panic crackled through his radio. Norris told his team he was doing everything within his power to make his better performing, though actually slightly older, tyres work to make the kill. Verstappen had no grip. He was hanging on.

Two laps to go and the margin was one second. Then less than a second as the final 3.05miles circuit beckoned. In the end Verstappen was home. What final, unexpected drama. The winning margin: 0.725sec. Great stuff. ‘One or two laps would have been beautiful,’ said Norris. ‘But it wasn’t to be.’

Oscar Piastri took fourth place in the other McLaren.

Mercedes? They are still stuck in treacle. Lewis Hamilton finished sixth, behind Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz. George Russell crossed the line in seventh at the end of a weekend during which he struggled throughout.