Pole-sitter Hamilton, 31, was bidding to become the first driver since the great Juan Manuel Fangio in the 1950s to claim a hat-trick of victories at the so-called Temple of Speed.
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Despite having shouldered the responsibility for his poor start, Hamilton admitted he only did so because he wanted to ease any concerns his team in the garage may have been having as a result.
Hamilton revealed that wheelspin off the line left him unable to keep the chasing pack behind him, and the Mercedes driver reached the first corner down in sixth as Rosberg led the Ferrari pair of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen as well as the Williams of Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo in the Red Bull.
Ricciardo, choosing super-soft tyres for the final stint rather than the softs on the Williams, closed in after their final stops and pulled a brilliant overtaking move from a long way back into Turn One at the start of lap 47 to take the place.
Hamilton now has 250 points, Rosberg 248 with Singapore’s night race the next destination.
It means Rosberg, who secured his seventh win of the season and 21st of his career, now trails Hamilton by just two points in the drivers’ championship with seven races remaining.
Hamilton finished 15 seconds down on his Mercedes team-mate. Talking about the retirements, both Felipe Nasr and Jolyon Palmer collided on turn 1 on Lap 2 and were forced to retire, which also lead to Nasr attracting a penalty of 10 seconds.
Sergio Perez was eighth ahead of his Force India team-mate Nico Hulkenberg with Esteban Gutierrez taking 10th for Haas.
“It is a very special day for me, I am very happy to have finally won here in Italy”, said Rosberg.
“I can tell you now that I do have a two-year contract starting next year with McLaren-Honda”, said Button.
“It was all down to the start”.
Sure, the Silver Arrows have still won 13 of 14 races this year, but at least you can’t count on them to make a ideal start and ride off into the sunset. I knew I could push Lewis in the race either way – if he was in front of me or behind me. “I’m feeling great. The race is on with Lewis of course, it’s always going to be a great battle and I look forward to what’s to come”, he was quoted as saying by the official website of F1.
However, after the race, the World Championship leader – who is a 1/4 favourite for the Drivers’ Championship title – said that his initial communication with the team had not been accurate.
“If you start to blame this is where you start going downhill because people will try to protect their arse and have a conservative system in place rather than putting the best development on the vehicle”.
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“They’ll be working very hard – it’s not a quick fix so it’s not something we can change for the next race”.
