Five Things to Know About the 2025 Emilia Romagna GP

Formula 1 is heading to the European heartlands for the coming months, and it all starts this weekend at the Emilia Romagna GP.

Quick trips around the continent from Grove and moving motorhomes from track to track are set to replace long-haul flights and endless hotel nights.

The historic Imola track – or Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, to give it its full title – kicks it all off. Here's what you need to know.

There is no argument that Monza is where the home of Italian Formula 1 racing is, with the circuit hosting the Italian GP since before the World Championship existed.

However, Imola stood in Monza's place to stage the 1980 Italian GP for the first and only time since F1's 1950 formation when the Temple of Speed was renovated.

This was Imola's debut in F1, but the 1980 race that saw Williams take a double podium was a gateway for the track to become a regular fixture in the calendar.

This weekend is a home race for F1's tyre supplier Pirelli, and the Italian company is offering a new compound for the teams.

The C6 option is the softest in the six-compound range, and the drivers should have even more grip for their single-lap runs.

Last year saw most cars run a one-stop strategy despite 2024's softest tyre trio being used. Might we see a two-stop race thanks to faster degrading rubber in 2025?

Moving from the Italian GP, Imola instead became the home for the San Marino GP from 1981 until 2006, even though the country of San Marino is around 100 km away.

Those 25 races were fruitful for Williams, as we took eight San Marino GP wins through that time with six different drivers. That has us joint with Ferrari as the most successful constructor at Imola over the years.

Nigel Mansell was the first to score a P1 back in 1987, before Riccardo Patrese, Alain Prost, Damon Hill, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, and Ralf Schumacher all repeated our Nige's success.

Those triumphs put the San Marino GP as our joint-third most successful race in terms of victories, only behind the British GP (10 wins) and the German GP (9 wins).

One of the reasons the single-stop strategy is so popular in Imola is thanks to how long a car remains in the pit lane when we need to change tyres.

There is no slow-speed chicane to cut as there once was, and drivers instead run parallel to the circuit for over half a kilometre.

Depending on how quickly a team can service the visiting car, a pit stop might add 25-30 seconds to each driver's race time. As such, it will be frantic should a VSC or Safety Car come near a pit window on Sunday.

Our Florida trip to Miami had the rare treat of a weekend gap on either side of the grand prix weekend after a busy start to the 2025 season.

We've taken a deep breath during the relative slowdown as we gear up for a second tripleheader of races that begin on Sunday.

After leaving Imola, we immediately head over to The Principality for the Monaco GP before continuing our journey west for Carlos' home race at the Spanish GP.

That means six of the first nine 2025 rounds appeared in back-to-back-to-back weekends as F1 accommodates the bumper 24-round calendar.

There is one more to go this year, but we have a while to wait, with the Vegas-Qatar-Abu Dhabi trio finishing the season in November and December.