Max Verstappen revindicated himself from last year's races in Italy. The young dutch had an exciting victory, his first one this season, in the incident-packed Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. 

Verstappen had a magnificent start of the race, which saw him go from P3 to leader of the race in the first chicane.

“The key, I think, is to have that good launch, which was also a bit of a surprise to me,” he said. “After last year where we always struggled in the wet, I think over the winter and beginning of the year we definitely made some improvements to that and today that was very good.”

As the track dried, the Dutch driver's tyres started to slide, giving Hamilton the chance to close the gap to the leader, forcing him into the pits for dry tyres. Verstappen had been over 5s ahead early on but his rival in the Mercedes had closed the gap to under 2 seconds before his stop. 

"Challenging, tricky consitions to make the right call from intermediate to slicks is not easy. Didn't want to be the first one, specially when you're in the lead, you don't want to ruin that," Verstappen told SkySports after the race. 

The pit stop came before the red flag, which was not beneficial for Max.

"For me it was not great, cause I had a big gap to the guys behind", and the red flag meant that those times would be eliminated and the drivers would be right behind Verstappen.

It was an almost perfect performance from the 11-time Grand Prix winner, although he did have a scare before the final Safety Car restart as he almost spun.

"I think we managed everything well," said the 23-year-old. "Then there was a little moment in my restart! Luckily we didn't spin But everything else went really well today so very happy with that."