Starting from pole, Lewis messed up his race when the five red lights went out, allowing Rosberg to move into the lead at the first corner. This meant that his race was that of a recovery, where he had to overtake a number of drivers to climb back to second position and overtake the Ferraris, who were supported by the home crowd.
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Mercedes chief Toto Wolff said straight after the race that Hamilton had taken the blame for the poor start, but he went on to retract his self-blame.
That cut the lead to just nine points going into the Italian GP, a race that Hamilton loves and has dominated in the past.
Hamilton had been on pole position by almost 0.5 seconds – a massive margin on a track with relatively few corners and his dominance left Rosberg curt in his media exchanges afterwards.
At the start, Hamilton saw not only Rosberg but also the Ferrari team of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen sweep past him, followed by Valtteri Bottas.
An engine change forced Hamilton to start from the back of the grid in Belgium, which in turn meant he could only manage a third-place finish, with Rosberg taking the win easily.
Nico Rosberg claimed a comfortable second victory in as many weeks after leading Lewis Hamilton across the line at the Italian Grand Prix.
Rosberg’s seventh win of the year was perhaps his easiest since Baku, and brings him within two points of Hamilton, 250 to 248.
The result sees Rosberg make further in-roads into Hamilton’s Championship lead, cutting the gap from 9 points to just 2 with seven races remaining. The gap is a bit bigger than we would like, but equally the last two races things are coming down a little bit more and things are heading the right way also back in the factory.
Behind the podium places Raikkonen was fourth, Ricciardo fifth and Bottas sixth.
But he could yet return to the grid in 2018 after revealing McLaren has an option to put him back in the vehicle.
Are you sure you want to stop, Jenson?
Button has signed a new two-year contract with McLaren but is to take a break from F1 in 2017. Daniil Kvyat’s awful run of bad luck continued as he retired on lap 36.
He caught Haas driver Romain Grosjean with two laps to go but the Frenchman was able to hold him off.
“When you start to blame this is when it goes downhill because people will try to protect their arse and make sure they have a conservative system in place rather than putting the best development on the auto”.
Referring to the championship, in which there are seven races remaining, Rosberg said: “The race is on”. “Remember, Lewis, the three cars ahead are on super-soft tyres so they’ll be quick for a few laps and then they will degrade”, he was told.
“Well, obviously yeah it was lost at the start”, Hamilton conceded. “It was all down to the start, I had an awesome start and it was all from there”.
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“I could see Nico pulling away and l knew from quite an early stage that winning the race would not be possible”.
