Troubles at the Villeneuve chicane for both Red Bull drivers

Both Red Bull Racing drivers had troubles at the second chicane, named after Ferrari legend Gilles Villeneuve, as they left the Imola circuit pointless on Sunday.

Mercedes wrapped up their seventh consecutive constructor's championship with a 1-2 finish at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, and Max Verstappen's retirement means he's now out of contention for the driver's championship with four races remaining too.

Verstappen was in a comfortable second between Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas before his tyre blew heading towards the Villeneuve chicane on lap 51 - 12 from home - bringing out the safety car.

He said: "I was actually having a lot of fun and then suddenly on the straight I lost the car because of some sort of tyre failure, so it’s a big shame because it would’ve been very nice to have second place and another podium. It is what it is and to score zero points is obviously not what you want but overall the race itself was very positive.”

But after the restart, team-mate Alex Albon spun on cold tyres as he battled Sergio Perez for sixth place, dropping him to last place and mounting more pressure on the Thair driver.

"I don't really know what happened at the restart yet," he admitted. "The tyres were cold and I had to push hard to try and stay ahead of the cars who had pitted under the Safety Car, which caused the spin, but it also felt like I may have got clipped but I'm not sure. It all just happened so quickly.

"In hindsight maybe we could have done something different, it was a difficult one, if we pitted for softs like the other cars did towards the end of the race then we could have seen a much better result. Obviously, it's not what we wanted."