The Winners, Losers and Talking Points From Monza

(Photo by F1)

If Formula 1 wanted to make a statement at Monza, it certainly delivered one.

What should have been a weekend of damage limitation for Kimi Antonelli instead became one of the most remarkable victories of his career. Starting from nineteenth after taking a grid penalty for a power unit change, the Italian fought his way through the field, hunted down his own teammate and crossed the line first in front of an Italian home crowd that had been waiting six decades for a home winner.

And while Antonelli was celebrating, George Russell was left wondering what might have been, Ferrari were left picking up the pieces of another miserable home race, and the championship picture suddenly looks a whole lot more straightforward.

Because after Monza, this isn’t really a four-way title fight anymore.

It is starting to look like a Mercedes civil war.

Friday: A First Look at the Pace

The signs were there from Friday.

George Russell ended FP2 fastest, with a 1:22:559, just 0.120 seconds ahead of Charles Leclerc, while Antonelli sat only another 0.021 seconds behind his teammate.

Ferrari had looked strong in the opening session, with both Leclerc and Hamilton giving the Tifosi something to get excited about. But as the weekend progressed, Mercedes began to look increasingly comfortable around the Temple of Speed.

And that mattered for Antonelli in particular.

A nineteenth-place start sounds disastrous at any circuit. At Monza, with its long straights and relatively simple overtaking opportunities, it was at least possible to imagine a recovery. But even then, nobody was seriously predicting what eventually happened.

Antonelli already had the pace. The question was whether he could actually use it.

Russell, meanwhile, looked like the man with the golden opportunity. His teammate – the championship leader – was going to be starting at the back. If there was ever a weekend for Russell to take a huge chunk out of that points deficit, this was it.

By the end of Friday, Mercedes had the fastest package. They just didn’t know yet which car would be taking it to the top step.

Saturday: Gasly Steals the Show

Then Pierre Gasly decided to ruin everyone’s predictions.

In one of the biggest qualifying surprises of the season, the Alpine driver snatched pole position with a 1:21:786, beating Russell by just six hundredths of a second.

For Gasly, it was an enormous moment. For Rusell, it was still a brilliant starting position. And for Antonelli, qualifying was almost academic.

He put his Mercedes seventh on the timing sheets, but his grid-drop penalty meant that he would start in nineteenth anyway.

That created an incredibly strange situation heading into Sunday. On pure pace, Antonelli had shown he could comfortably fight at the front. But the championship leader was about to start in the exact place nobody wants to start a grand prix from.

Russell, meanwhile, had everything Antonelli didn’t: the front row, clean air and the chance to take control of the race from the very beginning.

Suddenly, the pressure was firmly on Russell. If he couldn’t capitalise here, when exactly could he?

Sunday: A Grand Prix That Had Everything

If qualifying had given us a strange-looking grid, Sunday gave us an even stranger race.

Gasly lined up on pole, Russell alongside him, with the two Ferraris behind. Antonelli, meanwhile, faced the enormous task of recovering from nineteenth. On paper, it looked like the kind of race where the Italian could limit the damage and perhaps fight his way into the points.

Instead, he spent the afternoon doing much more than that.

The opening laps immediately threw the race into chaos. The Ferrari battle sent Hamilton tumbling down the order, before Leclerc’s crash at the Parabolica brought out the red flags and effectively reset the Grand Prix. Suddenly, a race that had already seen plenty of drama was being started all over again.

Gasly lost the advantage that pole had given him, while Russell found himself in control at the front. Behind them, the real charge was beginning.

Antonelli continued his climb through the field, picking off cars as he worked his way towards the leading group. It wasn’t just a case of waiting for strategy to come into play either. The Mercedes had the pace, and Antonelli was making full use of it.

Further back, the McLarens found themselves in an interesting fight of their own. Piastri and Norris both remained firmly in contention for strong points, although neither could match the pace of the Mercedes when it mattered. Verstappen, meanwhile, quietly worked his way into podium contention and ultimately became the beneficiary of the two Mercedes drivers fighting for the win.

Then came the strategic game.

The Virtual Safety Car gave the teams another opportunity to roll the dice, with Antonelli taking the chance to switch onto fresh mediums while Russell remained on the harder compound. Suddenly, the race had a completely different complexion. Antonelli had the fresher tyres and a rapidly closing gap, while Russell had track position but an increasingly difficult final stint ahead of him.

It set up the closing laps perfectly.

Behind the Mercedes, Verstappen secured third, while Norris and Piastri came home fourth and fifth respectively. Hamilton recovered to sixth after his disastrous opening lap, and Gasly’s afternoon ended with the slightly surreal result of finishing seventh after starting from pole.

But, inevitably, the attention remained at the front.

What had started with Gasly on pole and Antonelli nineteenth had ended with a Mercedes one-two, an Italian winner and one of the most extraordinary recoveries Monza has seen in years.

It was a race that somehow managed to combine a surprise pole, an early Ferrari disaster, a red flag, a remarkable comeback and a late fight for victory between teammates.

And that is before we even get into what the result means for Mercedes.

Kimi Antonelli: More Than Just A Win

Starting nineteenth, Kimi Antonelli already had one of the biggest challenges of the weekend ahead of him. By Sunday afternoon, he had turned it into a piece of Formula 1 history.

Antonelli became the first Italian to win the Italian Grand Prix since Ludovico Scarfiotti in 1966, ending a 60-year wait for a home winner. More impressively, his recovery from nineteenth to first became the second furthest back winning drive in F1 history, behind John Watson’s victory from twenty-second in 1983.

The result was made even more significant by what it did for his championship.

Antonelli arrived at Monza leading Russell, Hamilton and Norris, but with a grid penalty threatening to cost him valuable points. Instead, he leaves Italy with a race win and an even bigger advantage at the top.

He now leads Russell by 66 points, with Hamilton a further ten points behind Russell and Norris sitting 96 points off the championship lead.

With ten rounds still remaining, there is plenty of racing left. But Antonelli had now turned what could have been a difficult weekend into one of the strongest statements of his title campaign.

And with Mercedes clearly possessing the fastest package, his championship hopes are looking increasingly difficult to ignore.

Ferrari’s Home Heartbreak

For Ferrari, this was about as painful as Monza gets.

The weekend had started with genuine promise. Leclerc and Hamilton both put their Ferraris into the top four for qualifying, with Leclerc starting third and Hamilton fourth, and suddenly there was a very real possibility that Ferrari could give the Tifosi the home podium they had been waiting for.

Then they made it to Turn One.

Hamilton got the better launch and immediately went for the inside of his teammate. What followed was the sort of intra-team battle that looks spectacular for about three seconds before everyone in the garage starts wondering what on earth their drivers are doing.

The two Ferraris ran wheel-to-wheel through the opening corners, with Hamilton attempting to hold the outside line while Leclerc remained on the inside. As they reached the exit of Turn Two, Leclerc held his position and Hamilton was forced onto the gravel.

And that was the moment Hamilton’s race effectively changed.

He dropped from fourth to around tenth, having lost a huge chunk of ground in a battle that, perhaps most frustratingly, was between the two cars Ferrari needed to keep at the front. Hamilton was furious over radio, while the debate over who was actually at fault continued long after the chequered flag. Hamilton later argued that Ferrari needed clearer “rules of engagement”, while Leclerc described the battle as simply too close between teammates.

The irony was that there was barely any time to recover before Ferrari suffered an even bigger blow.

On Lap Two, Leclerc was fighting to defend fourth from Oscar Piastri when his Ferrari snapped into oversteer through the Parabolica. He lost the rear at high speed and hit the barriers, bringing out the red flag and ending his race. Thankfully, Leclerc walked away unharmed, but Ferrari’s strongest hope of a home podium was suddenly sitting in the barriers.

So within two laps, Ferrari had gone from having two cars in podium contention to having one driver fighting his way back through the field and the other watching from the sidelines.

Hamilton did what he could after the restart. He recovered from the opening lap incident, fought his way back into the points and eventually finished sixth. But by then the damage had already been done. He had lost valuable track position at the very start, Ferrari failed to capitalise on the opportunities that followed, and a later Virtual Safety Car strategy left him unable to stay with the Mercedes-powered cars at the front.

And that is what makes Monza so frustrating for Ferrari.

The pace was there. The starting positions were there. The atmosphere was certainly there.

While Antonelli was creating Italian sporting history in front of the Tifosi, Ferrari were left dealing with a teammate clash, a heavy crash and another missed opportunity at their most important race of the year.

And Now Mercedes Have a Problem

Which brings us to the slightly awkward problem Mercedes now have on their hands.

They have two drivers who can win races. They also have one driver who is starting to pull away in the championship.

Antonelli leads Russell by 66 points after Monza, and that gap feels particularly significant given how this weekend played out. Russell had the perfect opportunity to take points out of his teammate, with Antonelli starting from the back, yet by the chequered flag it was Antonelli standing on the top step.

The two were eventually fighting each other for the win, and while the battle was exactly what you’d expect from two drivers fighting at the front, it also offered a glimpse of the problem Mercedes could have to manage as the season progresses.

For now, both drivers are still free to race. And honestly, they should be. Russell is far from mathematically out of this championship and telling him to simply fall into line this early would be difficult to justify.

But that could change quickly.

If Antonelli keeps extending his advantage, Mercedes will eventually have to decide whether protecting the championship becomes more important than allowing two cars to fight for every position. And if Russell starts closing the gap, the opposite problem appears: how long can Mercedes let this play out before one bad incident could cost them both?

Monza showed that Antonelli is not going to sit back and protect what he has. He saw an opportunity for the win and went for it.

That makes the remaining races very interesting.

Mercedes might have the fastest car on the grid, but they could soon have the most complicated situation too.

So, Who Actually Won and Lost Monza?

There is obviously no competition for the biggest winner. Antonelli’s nineteenth-to-first recovery, record breaking home victory and championship boost make this his weekend by some distance.

Mercedes are the other obvious winners. A one-two at Monza, with Verstappen third, is exactly the kind of result that strengthens their position at the top of the Constructors’ Championship.

Collapinto also deserves a mention. His opening stint was seriously impressive, with the Alpine driver making some excellent progress through the field and putting himself in a strong position early on. The mistake that followed ultimately cost him, but the pace and aggression were there, and it was one of the more entertaining drives away from the front.

Gasly is another obvious winner. Sure, he didn’t get to keep the lead all the way to the chequered flag, but taking pole at Monza in an Alpine is an incredible achievement in itself. To then bring the car home seventh and score valuable points is a fantastic result. It might not have ended with the fairytale victory, but Gasly and Alpine can absolutely walk away from Monza proud of what they achieved.

For McLaren, fourth and fifth keeps the points coming, but neither Norris nor Piastri managed to turn Monza into the kind of championship-changing weekend they needed.

And then there is Ferrari. Leclerc didn’t finish. Hamilton finished sixth. The Tifosi went home without a podium. At their home race, that’s a pretty clear loss.

The Championship: It’s Becoming Mercedes vs Mercedes

And this is perhaps the biggest takeaway from Monza.

Antonelli now leads the championship on 267 points, with Russell second on 201. Hamilton sits third on 191, while Norris is fourth on 171.

So, technically, Hamilton and Norris are still in the fight.

Realistically? Things are looking increasingly difficult.

With ten races still to go, neither points deficit is impossible to overcome, but both drivers now need a serious swing in momentum – and, more importantly they need Mercedes to stop taking so many points at the front.

That doesn’t look particularly likely right now. The fight is far from over, but the picture has certainly changed.

Written by Eszter Szalontai