Imola, the site of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, has added additional gravel traps at Piratella, Acque Minerali and Variante Alta to help tackle the series' recurring issues with track limits. It has also enhanced the circuit's old-school feel, with its narrow yet challenging layout along with its many undulations and sudden direction changes. F1's drivers have almost universally given Imola's tweaks a thumbs-up, with Verstappen wishing the calendar had more circuits like it rather than the increasing number of street circuits.
"I think it's great. You get punished if you go wide," Red Bull's triple world champion said. "Honestly, it's just a fantastic track.
I wish we had 24 of those on the calendar. We go to a lot of tracks that don’t really excite me, but this is unbelievable. "There are a few old-school tracks that we have remaining on the calendar and that's also what I fell in love with when I started racing and watching F1.
We need more of those." McLaren's Oscar Piastri added: "It's one of the toughest tracks of the year in terms of how old-school it is and having gravel everywhere. "You don't have to worry about track limits.
You know if you've gone over it because you're in the gravel or you're off." Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc even added Imola to the category of driver favourites that also includes Spa-Francorchamps, Suzuka, Monaco and Zandvoort, but he did point out some of F1's more traditional venues need to look at how to improve the spectacle for the fan.
