Smith: Farewell to the Imola GP — a beautiful, flawed treasure of F1 heritage

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IMOLA, Italy — Growing up, there were a handful of tracks that I knew held a very special place within Formula One history.

Spa. Monza. Suzuka. Silverstone. All circuits that I one day dreamed of seeing and, through the career to which I’ve dedicated over a decade, I’ve been fortunate enough to visit nearly every year.

Imola was one iconic circuit that seemed unlikely to become part of my rotation of races on the F1 beat in the mid- and late-2010s. As a child who devoured books about the legend of Ayrton Senna, I knew all about this place — but when I started reporting on F1, its time on the calendar was a thing of the past. It hadn’t hosted an F1 since the 2006 San Marino Grand Prix, when Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher defeated then Renault driver Fernando Alonso in a race-long battle – setting the tone for the season that would ignite my love for the sport.

Things changed. After initially coming back to the F1 calendar as part of the heavily revised, temporary, calendar in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, it then became a regular fixture as the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, giving Italy two races per season along with Monza and the Italian Grand Prix.

Now, all signs are pointing to this year’s F1 race being the last at Imola — for the foreseeable, anyway. The track doesn’t have a contract beyond this year and with Madrid joining in 2026, a deal still in place for Barcelona and F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali insisting the championship won’t grow beyond the existing number of 24 rounds per season, something has to give. And that looks set to be Imola.

The old-school feel of the facility may be incredibly charming, but the list of complaints about the track has expanded in recent years. It frankly feels like F1 has grown a bit too big for Imola. The paddock is cramped and crowded. The traffic getting in and out of the track is a nightmare (a problem not exclusive to Imola, it must be noted). It’s just not the easiest place to work for many in the paddock.

Imola has plenty of charm (Peter Fox – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

Last year, the media center moved out of that area to make room for a hospitality suite and was relocated to a tent near the track’s fan zone, meaning my work has been soundtracked this weekend by the relentless thud of EDM designed to gee up the fans. Yesterday, there was a loss of water supply to the men’s toilets at the media center’s rear.

“Ah well, at least it’s the last one!” has been the regular refrain as people up and down the paddock brush off any gripes over the past couple of days. And it’s true.

But every time I hear that comment, part of me feels a little disappointed. In the last five years, I’ve not only had the chance to visit a track I long thought would not be part of my ‘world’ in F1, but it has also given me some wonderful memories.

I first came to Imola for what F1 media unaffectionately refers to as “the COVID-19 race” in 2020, back when it was lobbed onto the calendar as a late replacement for many of the cancelled races that year, when the championship only visited races in Europe and the Middle East. F1 also decided to trial a two-day race weekend, holding a single practice session on the Saturday morning before diving into qualifying — think sprint weekend, just without the sprint elements.

No fans were allowed to attend the race due to a recent spike in COVID-19 cases, while all personnel, including the drivers, were required to return negative tests to even fly to Italy. There was also an order for all restaurants and cafes to close at 6 p.m., causing some members of the paddock to actually fear reliance on takeaway pizza for the weekend. Being a functioning adult, I resorted to home cooking in my Airbnb, which I knew was a winner after a dog came to greet me at the gate.

I went to the track on that Friday to visit the memorial to Senna at Tamburello corner, the site of his fatal 1994 crash. I’d seen pictures, but to be there in the eerie quiet with few people around felt powerful. It was also a time of year when Imola traditionally didn’t host F1 — even back when it was a calendar regular — in the fall.

Flags and messages expressing love for Senna, nearly 30 years on from his death, continued to hang on the catch fencing, while a Brazilian flag had also been tied around the statue of the F1 legend – situated opposite the wall where he crashed for the final time. There were also Austrian flags hung in memory of Roland Ratzenberger, who died on the same weekend at Imola that changed F1 forever.

People visit the monument dedicated to Ayrton Senna at Imola (Emmanuele Ciancaglini/Getty Images)

A short walk down from that memorial is one in honor of Gilles Villeneuve, one of the greatest F1 drivers never to be world champion (and my mother’s personal hero). Villeneuve’s final F1 race came at Imola, two weeks before his death in a crash in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix, and the links to Ferrari (he made nearly all his 67 starts for the Italian team) here made the chicane bearing his name an appropriate site for the memorial to his career.

When I returned to Imola in 2022, having missed 2021’s race for personal reasons, it was heartening to see fans still flocking to these points at the track after the restrictions on attendees had been lifted. The same was true this year on Saturday when I went trackside for FP3. The flags and tributes are regularly updated as people come from all over the world to honor Senna, Ratzenberger and Villeneuve. If anyone reading ever goes to Imola, I cannot stress enough how vital it is to visit these important spots of F1 history.

I’ll also miss the chance to go and watch F1 cars at Imola. Yes, it’s doable at every single track, and the ‘old-school’ European circuits certainly have a different feel. But there’s something I find particularly charming about this place. It’s the ripple of applause and cheers from the grandstands each time a Ferrari passes by, the fans climbing walls and fences to gain the best vantage point possible. It’s the undulating corners, the speed of the cars through Piratella, the dip down to Acque Minerali. It’s the authentic feel you get from being in the heart of the Italian countryside.

This is also a track and region that had to recover from the disastrous floods in 2023 that forced the cancellation of the grand prix and displaced over 50,000 people, causing more than €10 billion in damage. One year later, the 2024 race at Imola was a symbol of strength and recovery; a source of joy to a region that had lost so much.

And I can’t go through an ode to Imola without mentioning ‘Imola cat’, the late, great Formulino – a tabby cat who was jokingly proclaimed as the “owner of Imola” and lived at the circuit. He was poking around the paddock in 2020, intruding the media pen while some of the drivers completed their interviews, and even had his own VIP paddock pass issued the following year. His official position listed simply as “cat.” Formulino sadly died in 2023, but remains a charming part of Imola’s recent F1 history.

Is this a great circuit for racing in this modern age of big, bulky F1 cars? Maybe not. And it wasn’t in the mid-2000s either.

Imola is one of the most qualifying-dependent tracks for F1 due to the difficulty in overtaking on its technical, brutal confines, while its long, slow pit lane pushes all drivers toward a one-stop tire strategy. It’s a bit narrow and, while the grass and gravel will punish the smallest of mistakes, it doesn’t make for the kind of overtake-fest that seems to dictate whether a track is good or bad nowadays.

Maybe this is the ‘graduation goggles’ or rose-tinted spectacles talking. But I’m going to miss Imola. Going trackside for final practice this year, thanking the Italian marshals for getting me through the access gates and seeing the fans soaking up the sunshine, I felt a tinge of sadness to think this will be the last time I do this, for a while at least.

What is Imola’s future? Of course the track would want to host F1 going forwards. But as the championship moves toward greater circuit rotation in upcoming calendars – seen as a way for F1 to reach more markets while reducing the financial and organizational burden on some of the tracks in Europe – it’s likely that Imola will be part of those conversations. But, thanks to an investment push to make improvements to its infrastructure and paddock buildings, Monza is going to be the permanent home for F1 in Italy.

Still — thank you, Imola. For the funny Airbnbs, the days spent in Bologna, the post-track evenings spent in food theme parks (I celebrated buying my apartment at one in 2022), the awesome viewing opportunities and for a true Italian experience.

The memories are wonderful. I truly hope to be back someday.

(Peter Fox – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

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