Verstappen holds off spirited late Norris charge to win at Imola

It was a return to winning ways for Max Verstappen on Sunday as he held off a spirited fight from Lando Norris to claim victory at the Emilia Romanga Grand Prix.

Despite leading from lights to flag to claim his fifth win in seven races this season, the Red Bull Racing man had to be on his guard in the closing stages when McLaren’s charge closed to within less than a second.

The Dutchman though held him off to win the race and further extend his championship lead to 48 points from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

“It was a close race today,” he said. “I didn’t expect that the car would have that kind of pace at the beginning, which was nice and we were strong on the medium tyres.

“During the last ten laps I was really trying to survive on the tyres and managed to keep Lando behind, but it required a lot of focus as we were on the limit with the penalty.

“However, we managed to work through and take the win; I was definitely counting down the laps and it was a great feeling when we took the chequered flag.”

Team-mate Sergio Perez dropped to third in the championship standings after a scrappy race at Imola. After crashing in free-practice and missing Q3, the Mexican struggled to make inroads, finishing eighth.

He said: “We knew it was going to be a hard race as the whole weekend was compromised from qualifying. Imola is a difficult track to overtake on so this was the maximum we could do.

“We knew that McLaren were the fastest but Max had one of the best weekends I’ve seen from him in a while, so a lot of praise for that and this was a great result for us.”