17:04 Pierre Gasly has achieved a spectacular victory in a very memorable edition of the Italian Grand Prix. Carlos Sainz finished second just behind the AlphaTauri driver, while Lance Stroll completed the podium at Monza. A safety car, a red flag and a blunder from the Mercedes Formula 1 team formed the basis of this remarkable result. Max Verstappen did not see the finish line.
It should have been an easy afternoon for Mercedes, but it all turned out a little differently. Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas were a blow faster than the competition on Saturday and it was therefore expected that the Mercedes duo would hit the field in the race. Bottas, however, made a lousy start from P2, while Mercedes made a huge mistake at Hamilton later in the race.
Initially it was still ‘business as usual’ for the six-time world champion. The Briton started from pole position, got off fine when the red lights above the straight went out and steadily pulled away from the rest of the field. Bottas allegedly had a lot of trouble getting his Mercedes going. The Finn soon saw Carlos Sainz pass in the McLaren, after which Lando Norris, Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo also passed the Finn in the first lap. Bottas thought for a moment that he had a flat tire, but that turned out not to be the case. However, the Mercedes driver failed to come back to the front in the laps that followed.
Max Verstappen also did not have a good start. The Red Bull driver started the race from P5 and fell back to eighth place in the first meters. In the third lap, the Limburger fought his way past Lance Stroll at the first chicane, so that he ended up in seventh position behind Bottas. A few laps later, Sebastian Vettel was hit by a braking problem. The German shot straight into the first corner and went straight through two Styrofoam blocks. He sent his Ferrari to the pits to get out. A dramatic start for the Maranello team, but it was all going to be much worse for the Scuderia. After Vettel’s withdrawal, just as little happened in the race. It was more or less waiting for the first pit stops.
However, it turned out to be a calm before the storm. The first regular pit stops had just been made when Kevin Magnussen pulled his Haas aside at the start of the straight with a technical problem. Because the car was in a dangerous place for the marshals, the safety car was sent outside. And because the car was not far from the pit entrance, it was decided to close the pit lane. However, Mercedes overlooked the latest report from the race management and called Hamilton in for a tire change. A little later Alfa Romeo did the same with Antonio Giovinazzi. It would put both drivers on a 10-second stop and go penalty, throwing Mercedes away an almost certain victory.
After Magnussen’s car was pushed away, the pit lane opened and the drivers who had not yet entered made a pit stop, although Lance Stroll decided to take the risk and stay outside. A lap later, the safety car came in and the race continued with a fairly scrambled field. Hamilton led ahead of Lance Stroll, Pierre Gasly, Antonio Giovinazzi, Kimi Raikkonen and Charles Leclerc, while Max Verstappen was only thirteenth after the pit stops. In the meantime, however, it was clear that Hamilton, like Giovinazzi, had to go to the pits one more time, which suddenly turned it into a very interesting race.
The game had only just started again or it went wrong at Charles Leclerc. The Monegask got off the track in the Parabolica and ended up with a considerable blow in the tire stacks there. Leclerc was able to get out unharmed despite the big crash, but with a double DNF, Ferrari’s disastrous home race was complete. After the crash, the red flag appeared because the runway barrier had to be repaired. The field was ordered to find the pit lane, where the drivers had to wait for the work on the tire piles to be completed. Hamilton, incensed at the stop and go he had been given, took advantage of the break to get redress from the stewards but it didn’t work. He could almost certainly write the victory on his stomach.
At 16:20 the drivers were sent out of the pits and the Italian Grand Prix resumed with a standing start. Hamilton remained in the lead, ahead of Gasly, Raikkonen and Giovinazzi. The championship leader then went straight in to collect his penalty. The Briton was the last to come back in the race and was 25 seconds behind Alexander Albon, who also had a miserable afternoon and was at the time in the penultimate place in Monza. A lap later, Giovinazzi went to the pits to redeem his penalty, with the top three being Gasly, Raikkonen and Sainz. Verstappen came to the pits at the same time as the Italian. There appeared to be a problem with his Honda engine, with which the Dutchman, who was fourteenth, scored a DNF for the second time this season.
In the meantime, the question had arisen who was going to win this crazy Grand Prix. Gasly took the lead and thus had the best papers for the time being, but Sainz in the McLaren also made a quick impression. The Spaniard fought his way past Raikkonen at the first corner, where he was second again, just like at the start of the race. The question then was whether the Spaniard could still pick up on Gasly, who had built up a four-second lead in the meantime. With four laps to go the difference was only one and a half seconds and by the start of the last lap the gap was completely closed. “I want that victory,” he shouted over the on-board radio. Sainz, however, fell just short of catching up on the final lap and that is how Gasly took his first Formula 1 victory in Italy and the first for AlphaTauri since Sebastian Vettel’s victory in the Italian Grand Prix of 2008, albeit under the name Toro Rosso. .
Raikkonen also saw Lance Stroll pass after Sainz, placing the Canadian third. The Racing Point driver could no longer eat the cheese and took his second podium place in Formula 1 in Italy, after finishing third with Williams in Azerbaijan in 2017. It soon became clear that Raikkonen couldn’t handle the pace at the front. The team quickly dropped further back to finish thirteenth. Lande Norris crossed the finish line just behind Stroll in fourth place, ahead of Valtteri Bottas, who could not make a fist all afternoon and was colorless fifth. Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon finished sixth and seventh for Renault, Hamilton had a hard time in the final stages of the race and fought back to eighth place. Daniil Kvyat and Sergio Perez shared the last points in this bizarre race.
The Italian GP was the last for the Williams family. In the run-up to the race, it was announced that Frank and Claire Williams are withdrawing from the team, now that it has been taken over by the American Dorilton Capital. Nicholas Latifi and George Russell finished 11th and 14th in Williams’ final race as a family team. Albon finished fifteenth one second behind Russell, while Giovinazzi was last in the race.
In a week’s time, Formula 1 will continue racing at Mugello, where the Grand Prix of Tuscany will be held.
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