The race is on, and Lewis Hamilton claimed his ninth win of the season in the San Marino,

sorry, the Amelior Romana Grand Prix, at Imola, with a little help from Esteban Okon's

gearbox and a virtual safety car. But would he have won anyway? I'm Ed Strawraw, and joining me to answer this and all the other questions about the race are Scott Mitchell and Mark Hughes. Well, Scott, how are you doing? I hope you're quite jealous of the fact that I got to go to Imola, because I've been really enjoying being at Imola because of all the history and everything, and you're stuck in your Stockholm padholm pad yeah well i've been quite ill the last few days so it's probably a good thing in these

unusual times that i was absolutely nowhere near the paddock um i probably would have prompted all

sorts of concerns that uh something was something was a miss but it's fine i got to enjoy the

imola renan from the comfort of my own flat so it was still quite nice i did sneeze at one point during the weekend and got a few funny looks but yeah but that's nothing to do with covid times ed that's because when you sneeze it's like the foundations of a building shake yeah which is not ideal considering i do suffer from hay fever as well even this late in the year so uh yeah it it's a common occurrence. Those who work in the media centre are used to that kind of thing. And also, someone who's been to Imler for plenty of San Marino Grand Prix is Mark Hughes. It's great to be back there, wasn't it? Yeah, although I wasn't physically present. It was great to see it again. It's great to see cars going around there again um but i've got to

say these these cars this generation of cars sort of dwarf the circuit i thought um they just

sort of devouted it it looked like the drivers were just sort of guiding them like missiles rather than

driving them really.

But deeply impressive, but yeah, not sure what it means.

But yeah, it was a beautiful place.

And it was just mind-blown seeing some of the in-car stuff.

Yeah, it did look absolutely great.

It was a little bit weird because it was a bit like a ghost town because obviously the crowd were shut out not too long before, actually, because the COVID situation's worsening. And of course, there's a kind of 6pm curfews, not quite the word, but all the restaurants and everything shut. So there was hardly anyone there, but it was great. I must admit I took the chance to actually watch the start kind of in person, as it were.

You know, often we'll see the start through a media centre window or from afar. But, yeah, I was able to watch the start from above the pits, which was a very good moment. It's just, I've not actually quite been that close to a Grand Prix start, funnily enough, in all the, in all the Grand Prix I've been to.

So I took the opportunity to do that, and I'm just sorry there weren't more people able to see it. Well, shall we get on with it and pile into it, Mark? Valtteri Bottas took pole, led the first stint, albeit without a massive margin over Max Verstappen, but really the die was cast for him in this race when he hit that debris on the second lap, wasn't it? Yeah, that was him effectively

done full because it lost him 15 points of downforce, which Mark reckoned equated to about

7 tenths of a second. So, you know, it was fundamentally a slower car at that point than Vestappen's Red Bull.

So when Red Bull pulled the under plug, Mercedes had to respond because of the left him out for one more lap than they did.

He would have lost the place.

And so essentially that had taken...

The two cars are running ahead of Hamilton.

...