Max Verstappen put paid to a Ferrari party with victory for Red Bull in Saturday’s sprint race for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix but the tifosi’s disappointment was as nothing to the resounding death knell that Lewis Hamilton sounded at Imola. With the seven-time world champion conceding that after three races any hope he and his Mercedes team had of fighting for the world championship was over, it was the end of an era in Formula One.
Hamilton and Mercedes endured a fruitless toil at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, concluding with a highly surprising admission from the usually circumspect driver that his team had got the concept of their car wrong. “We are obviously not fighting for the championship,” Hamilton said. “Ultimately we haven’t got it right this year but everyone’s working as hard as they can to reverse it.”
