The Monza drive was the first time that Nico Rosberg won at this circuit.
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“Obviously it was lost at the start”, Hamilton told reporters.
Suddenly the momentum which had slowly been slipping away from German after he won the opening four races of the year is falling back in his favour.
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.
The race looked set to be a straight fight between the Mercedes teammates and title rivals, but a slow getaway by Hamilton at the start meant Rosberg led into Turn 1. But most importantly for him, the win reduces Hamilton’s cushion to a mere two points.
The Ferraris were soon in, both for more super-softs, indicating that the scuderia were adopting a two-stop strategy while Mercedes, with Hamilton inheriting second place 15 seconds behind Rosberg, sticking to “Plan A”. It’s not a quick fix, something you can change for the next race.
Most of this race’s drama came in the first 10 seconds.
The race at the front between Mercedes is still up for grabs, but the best of the rest is starting to look likely that it will be Ricciardo.
Gobbled up by Rosberg, both Ferrari drivers and then the Williams of Valtteri Bottas and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo on the long run down to the opening chicane, Hamilton was left facing an nearly impossible task of winning for a third year on the trot in Italy.
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.
Still, as one of the Twitter observers pointed out: “Dress for the job you want, not the one you have”. He is contracted with the team through the 2018 season.
Romain Grosjean finished a lap down in 11th, ahead of Jenson Button in 12th. The one person the Merc drivers have trouble passing if they fall behind is their team-mate.
Alonso’s contract is up at the end of 2017 and he has said he will decide next year whether to extend his career beyond that. “I had an awesome start and that made the win, so it was all there”, Rosberg said.
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.
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Hamilton said: “It was the start”. “I knew that my engineers would be anxious and nervous about how the start went so that is why I had to put their mind at ease [on the radio]”.
