Minardi: Five seconds of penalty is too little

      Giancarlo Minardi, the former owner of his own team, shared his impressions of the Saudi Grand Prix on his website.…

      Giancarlo Minardi: "In Saudi Arabia, we witnessed a weekend under the McLaren banner and the victory of Oscar Piastri, who led the drivers' championship after his third victory of the season. Oscar has grown into a strong racer.

      After a difficult weekend in Bahrain, Max Verstappen won an incredible pole position in Jeddah, but I disagree with the penalty. I think five seconds is too little, considering the advantage he gained and the fact that it happened at the beginning of the race. He had enough time to recoup: he crossed the finish line in second place with a gap of just over two seconds.

      Leclair deserves credit, because he not only provided Ferrari with the first podium of the season, but also compensated for the real problems of the car, which were evident from the unconvincing performance of Hamilton, who now bears no resemblance to the seven-time world champion. It's completely inexplicable at the moment.

      Kimi Antonelli has been a great replacement for Hamilton at Mercedes. It is now the second force in the World championship with a couple of riders showing very close results, although one of them is a rookie. And Russell's excellent form is evidenced by his third position in qualifying and fifth place in the race.

      It was a bad weekend for Norris. His performance is unstable, and the problems are obvious. It's great that after finishing tenth at the start, he was able to win back – this is the result of a good strategy, but the mistake in the qualifying final turned out to be very costly.

      Despite having the best car on the track, he was unable to overtake Leclair. This makes the result achieved by Monegasque even more important. Norris is suffering greatly from the "Piastri problem", which fully exploits the potential of McLaren.

      It was also a positive weekend for Carlos Sainz, who once again left his team-mate Elbon behind at the wheel of Williams, as well as for Hajjar, who secured Racing Bulls a place in the top 10. Compared to last season, Aston Martin is the most disappointing.

      In two weeks, we will leave for Miami, and then for the first European stage at the Enzo and Dino Ferrari Circuit in Imola on May 16-18.

      It was the Easter weekend in motorsport. If Jeddah hosted the fifth stage of Formula 1, then Imola hosted the second stage of the WEC series, which attracted more than 65,000 fans. I have to thank them for the warmth with which they welcomed me, especially at the start of the 6 o'clock, as well as the entire Formula Imola team for a job well done. There will be even more spectators at the Grand Prix in four weeks."