How F1 teams are expected to approach 2025's update cycle starting with Imola

Historically, the start of Formula 1's ‘European season’ has been accompanied with the first large-scale updates aside from any early-season emergency tinkering. And that's largely down to convenience; it's a lot easier (and cheaper) to bring a whole batch of new parts to Italy (or Spain, when the round took place at Barcelona) in a truck compared to the logistical faff of flying/shipping them to the further reaches of the globe.

The terms and conditions associated with the 2025 season do still apply. Restrictions applied by the budget cap and aero testing allowances will continue to put teams into a position where they can no longer have their cake and devour it; thus, Imola is likely to be the venue for one last push before the current cars are, to give it the distastefully euphemistic corporate by-word, 'sunsetted' at the end of the season.

That said, there's still the small matter of front wing revisions to satisfy the beefed-up flex tests in place for Barcelona, which may well levy an effect on the pecking order when the field reaches the climax of 2025's second triple-header. But that's a problem to dissect a little later down the line.

Imola is not necessarily the best circuit to explore the full potential of an update, simply because there's less variation in corner profiles versus somewhere like Barcelona. And even so, the dreadfully clumsy final corner complex previously ascribed to the Montmelo circuit was quite useful in testing for simulating low-speed performance. It's not there now, so we've got less to go on.

The best one can hope for with high-speed corner performance at Imola is arguably though Piratella, and even then, it's 'only' a sixth-gear corner and requires a full throttle lift (even if it's for just a second) before turn-in. For any further validation work, Barcelona will have to wait. 

Based on 2024, Imola might not be the best circuit to gauge if updates have made an improvement, but it's proven to be an effective yardstick if the car has become more difficult to drive as a result. Take the changes that Ferrari and Aston Martin made to its cars last season in its attempts to draw more performance from the underbody, for example; in the SF-24, the Imola modifications seem to encourage a larger degree of bouncing in the high-speed areas (which were visible to a small degree at Imola, but much more exposed in the Barcelona version of the package). Aston Martin's AMR24 started the year on decent footing, but its own updates made the car much more difficult to drive.

Although teams shall be bringing car updates this weekend, it may take a few grands prix to discover if they've worked or not

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

There should be enough data on the current iteration of Imola to not only understand the quirks of the circuit, but to get an idea of what to expect from the track data offered up by the opening practice sessions. That way, the teams can observe how the results correlate and make a decision reasonably early into the weekend of what to do next with the additional pieces. 

Until the document detailing the registered changes lands in our inboxes (or, alternatively, with the keen eyes of those rambling through the pitlane on Thursday), we won't know the grand sum of every new part expected at Imola. It is anticipated that Red Bull and Mercedes will have a wealth of new parts at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari as they attempt to close McLaren down in the constructors' standings, while Ferrari is expected to bring a smattering of minor aero modifications - but with further changes apparently planned later down the road.

McLaren has been tight-lipped on the prospect of updates at Imola, although team principal Andrea Stella has conceded that the drivers are struggling to pull out consistently top-end lap times out of the MCL39 hat when it comes to the qualifying crunch. Whether this is something that McLaren is looking towards depends entirely if it chooses to put resources into its current contender. It knows that, to a certain degree, it can mostly rely on the slow creep of its race pace advantage to punish the other teams with tyre offsets over a stint. Yet, Suzuka has also shown that this cannot be the case in every grand prix, and that the car must also be malleable in qualifying to benefit from track-position races.

Although we might be expecting fewer big-ticket items at Imola, there's still plenty left to do before the year is out - and ensuring McLaren's heels can be nipped at must be top of the priority list

As for Red Bull and Mercedes, both teams must uncover a few tricks to match the Woking squad in race pace terms. Much of McLaren's advantage has been attributed to managing its tyre temperatures, helped by its approach to the brake duct and hub design to extract heat from the wheel assembly and release it well away from the tyres. Naturally, the cars need to fire up their tyres nice and swiftly to ensure the grip is present for a qualifying lap, but heat retention over a race distance needs to be very carefully managed. 

Mercedes has at least improved in this area, as last year's W15 was an excellent car in cool conditions and very much the opposite when track conditions got warm. Although the team insists that it has been steadily improving its car over the season, it'll hope to make greater strides towards its immediate rivals - and surpass Red Bull more on a more regular basis when it comes to its own race pace. For Red Bull's part, it must prove to itself that it hasn't reached the limit of what it can do within the bounds of the current rules; although performance is ripe enough to be picked in qualifying if Verstappen can get the stars to align, there is a drop-off towards the end of race stints that takes the RB21 out of victory contention at the higher degradation venues.

Funnily enough, much of 2025 appears to have been defined by qualifying pace; Verstappen's Suzuka win and Lewis Hamilton's China sprint win are held up as the examples here. In reality, it's more likely been a story of McLaren's race pace and in stints progressing to the point where the papaya cars really thrive. In the Suzuka example, degradation was so low that any attempt to build a tyre offset was futile - so McLaren could not flex its advantage here. In China, even though there was a visible degree of deg, the shorter race length still mitigated some of the damage - plus, Oscar Piastri wasn't exactly helped by getting bogged down behind Verstappen, and as part of a longer race might have stopped sooner as an undercut attempt.

That's a big area that teams need to exploit, if they feel the results on offer in 2025 are worth exploiting. Although we might be expecting fewer big-ticket items at Imola, there's still plenty left to do before the year is out - and ensuring McLaren's heels can be nipped at must be top of the priority list. And, of course, there's a chance for midfielders to make one final stab in attempting to prise Williams out of fifth in the constructors' championship - assuming the Grove team's 'firm view on 2026' approach is not detracted from.

Will the F1 2025 pecking order have changed much after Imola?

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