Emilia Romagna Grand Prix: F1 – live!

Lap 25: An obdurate Hamilton has closed the gap at the front to 2.5secs.

Lap 24: A frustrated Vettel serves his penalty, rejoining the track 3 seconds off in the first sector.

Lap 22: Vettel comes out on a set of slick tyres, the first driver to do so. But he’ll also have to deal with a 10-second stop and go penalty! His wheels weren’t fitted at the five-minute signal before the race.

Lap 21: George Russell, who has never got a point for Williams, is now 10th. Hamilton and Verstappen have pulled away into a class of their own and have just lapped Fernando Alonso in 16th.

Lap 19: Norris is told that his team “don’t want to be the first car onto dries”. He is five seconds ahead of Ricciardo and closing in on Perez.

Lap 17: “I have a lot more pace that I cannot use at the moment,” moans Norris, who is stuck behind teammate Ricciardo. The latter is promptly told to get out of the way.

“I can’t tell if this weather favours Max or Lewis,” writes Edwin Innih Imoesi. “This is intense. Bad luck for Sergio.”

Lap 15: Mick Schumacher is now 18th, with a replacement wing. Gasly pits to get some intermediates fitted.

Lap 14: Gasly’s full wets are proving horribly costly. He is 14th having started fifth.

Lap 13: Perez, currently fourth, has been given a stop-and-go penalty of 10 seconds for overtaking two cars under the safety car. That will cost him dear – he will have to stop in the pits for the full 10 seconds.

Lap 11: More squabbling between the trio in midfield as Norris and Sainz both inch past Gasly. And more rain arrives.

Lap 10: The leader clocks up his fastest lap. Perez is having less fun. “The steering wheel is moving by itself,” he complains to his team. Not ideal.

Lap 9: Verstappen is a full five seconds clear of Hamilton.

Lap 8: Sainz is flying and has overtaken Stroll and Gasly. In comes Norris, and he, Gasly and Stroll go three wide with Norris soaring past both. Remarkable driving from Norris.

Lap 7: The racing gets back underway and Hamilton and Verstappen go toe to toe again, this time Hamilton resists going for the kill.

Lap 5: Perez skids though the gravel under safety car – these conditions have thrown a cat among the pigeons.

Lap 4: Schumacher has crashed behind the safety car, trying to get temperature into his tyres, and hit the wall on the exit to the pit lane! There’s damage to the nose of his car but his race isn’t over yet… But he can’t pit because the lane is closed – so he’ll have to go round again before getting any repairs.

Lap 3: Latifi was at fault in his collision with Mazepin, who he drove onto the grass. Mercedes tell Hamilton:“Looks like we have damage to the front end wing.”

Lap 2: Tsunoda, who started last, is not mucking around and has already made his way up to 15th.

Lap 1: Ricciardo steams ahead of Gasly and Stroll into fifth while Latifi has hit Mazepin and spun into the wall, pretty hard. He’s okay though. And Leclerc has stolen ahead of Perez into third.

Lap 1: And we’re off. Verstappen gets away brilliantly, side by side with Hamilton into the first corner. Hamilton bounces over the curbs but holds on to second with Perez in close attendance. “I’ve got damage,” he says in his radio.

The gang rev up, and then head off for the formation lap, water spraying everywhere. Leclerc spins off! But gets going again and nips back past Gasly in to fourth

How they start:

1. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
2. Sergio Perez (Red Bull)
3. Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
4. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)
5. Pierre Gasly (Alpha Tauri)
6. Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren)
7. Lando Norris (McLaren)
8. Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes)
9. Esteban Ocon (Alpine)
10. Lance Stroll (Aston Martin)
11. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari)
12. George Russell (Williams)
13. Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin)
14. Nicholas Latifi (Williams)
15. Fernando Alonso (Alpine)
16. Kimi Raikkonen (Alfa Romeo)
17. Antonio Giovinazzi (Alfa Romeo)
18. Mick Schumacher (Haas)
19. Nikita Mazepin (Haas)
20. Yuki Tsunoda (Alpha Tauri)

Gasly, Ocon, Schmuacher and Mazepin are going to start with full wet tyres. And there will be no safety car start. Almost time now…

“It is tricky,” says Lando Norris, channelling his inner Joseph Simmons. “It is full wet at turn two but dry at the back. It will be a tricky start. It makes it more exiting. It’ll be a lot of fun as long as I keep it on the road.”

The cars of both Stroll and Vettel are undergoing some panicked last-minute work from the Aston Martin technicians – as is Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes.

It’s all happening, and the race is still 20 minutes away. Lance Stroll is reporting issues with his brakes – it looks like they might have caught fire – while Bottas has a tyre puncture.

And in more immediate news: it’s chucking it down in Imola! The cars are currently ploughing through puddles as they go through their reconnaissance laps.

Valtteri Bottas is blaming his disappointing display yesterday on Technical Difficulties. “First run, I went into turn two and had a really sudden snap from the rear end, and then it really continued through sector one, and I lost a lot of time,” he said. “Actually the same thing [happened] in run two; it was never there. I couldn’t trust the rear end of the car, and it was something that I didn’t feel in the whole qualifying before that.”

Hot off the press: F1 announced this morning that there will be a new grand prix in the calendar as of next year – in Miami, the city that keeps the roof blazin’. Here’s our full report:

Lewis Hamilton produced a performance to surprise even himself yesterday, completing one of his best laps ever – steaming around the Imola track in 1min 14.411sec – to claim pole position for ahead of the Red Bulls of Sergio Pérez and Max Verstappen. for the last few years Hamilton has had little competition for supremacy – but now he has exactly that, and is responding how the best sportspeople do: by upping his game accordingly.

The scene is set, then, for today’s race amid the resplendent scenery of northern Italy, on a track whose cruelty was laid bare yesterday by Lando Norris: his majestic final lap, which would have taken him second, took him outside the track limits by a matter of inches and thus didn’t count.

Valtteri Bottas’s did – although it was only enough to put him in eighth, which gives Red Bull a rare tactical advantage over Mercedes, with two drivers at the front in Sergio Pérez and Max Verstappen. “It is going to take us as a team performing as close to perfection as possible,” reckons Hamilton. A high bar. Let’s see if they can clear it.