A new agreement between the relevant parties means that the race continue to be held for years to come – and held at Monza.
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The crowd in Monza is known for invading the track at the checkered flag and after 11 years in Formula One and many more as the son of F1 champion Keke Rosberg the multi-national Mercedes driver wanted to thoroughly enjoy his first victory at the “Temple of Speed”.
‘We have had so many things go against us on our side of the garage, so to come back and be where we are, there are still lots of great things that can happen going forward’.
So this week it’s Fernando Alonso who wins in this category, screeching, “I don’t know what that means!” when his race engineer suggested a particular strategy, and then laughing in the face of his team when they suggested that he push a bit harder to move towards Romain Grosjean in front of him.
The German barely saw another vehicle as he sauntered to his seventh win of the season – one more than Hamilton – and the 21st of his career.
“We’re still caught out by random variation from one race to another”, Hamilton said.
“It was all down to the start”.
After the poor start, Hamilton said he could feel the race slipping away. To be honest, I knew my engineers would be anxious and nervous of how the start went, so that’s why I tried to put their minds at ease. I had an awesome start and that made the win. I did everything normal. The German driver won by a massive lead of 15 seconds over Hamilton who recovered to the second place after dropping to sixth. Whether Ferrari’s third place finish with Sebastian Vettel was cheered by the team or not, the fans certainly loved seeing “red” on the podium.
“In this team I will never blame anybody – not the driver, not the engineer, nobody”, he said.
“I think l got it down to nine or 10 seconds but unfortunately that is too big a gap to close on the tyres we have”, lamented Hamilton, who now leads the world championship by a mere two points. In the post-race press conference in Italy, Hamilton said: “We have a relatively inconsistent clutch and it’s hard to.In the past we were able to be told our clutch temperature, and it was easier to hit our target as well, but now it’s a lot less easy to know what your clutch is going to be delivering and what it’s not”.
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. “I needed to keep the pace up and it is never easy, but it was not the toughest race”.
“I think he should have a grid drop [at the next race]”, the 25-year-old rookie said.
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The battle for fifth and sixth saw Ricciardo pull a great overtake on Bottas to take fifth in the closing stages of the race, and Max Verstappen did for Sergio Perez with just a few laps to go to take seventh.
