Triple world champion Hamilton, who had been on pole position and was favourite to take his 50th career victory and third in a row at Monza, finished second after a slow start gifted Rosberg the race.
Advertisement
The poor start has cost Hamilton dearly with his world championship lead shrinking down to just two points over Rosberg.
“I don’t know what happened, l did everything as normal”, Hamilton said after battling back to finish in second through a combination of Mercedes’ superior speed and strategy.
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.
It was Hamilton’s third successive pole at the Italian event and his fifth in all at Monza, a feat that equalled those of Argentine Fangio and Brazilian Senna.
Veach came through to win with a margin of victory of 3.6268 seconds over Jones, who scored his first road course podium since winning the first of two races on the Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis weekend back in May. I knew he would not turn into me and we didn’t touch and it was clear.
With his main rival out of the equation, Rosberg turned in a faultless drive to win, cutting Hamilton’s championship lead to just two points.
Behind that, Daniel Ricciardo caught and passed Valtteri Bottas for fifth late on after taking on an alternate strategy.
“I feel that part of me is Italian in a way, because I have a lot of friends here and I grew up with the culture”. Behind the Mercedes cars on Sunday’s grid will be Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen. “I knew that my engineers would be anxious or nervous of how the start went, so I tried to put their mind at ease. It should have been a bigger race between Ferrari and us this weekend but hopefully in the future it will be”. I got up to second and that is the best I could do.
“Obviously, it was lost at the start”, said Hamilton.
Pascal Wehrlein had some trouble with his auto and had to stop, a disappointing end for the Manor driver who has a single point on the season.
The Force India of Sergio Perez ended up in eighth position while Felipe Massa, driving his last Italian GP after announcing he is quitting Formula One at the end of the current campaign, finished ninth, with the second Force India of Nico Hulkenberg.
Advertisement
Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz led Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson and Renault’s Kevin Magnussen home, as Pascal Wehrlein joined Palmer and Nasr in retirement when told to switch off his Manor’s Mercedes power unit. The start was the decider of the race and after that I was just trying to get back into second to reduce the damage.
