Time travel for the world champion – and slight discord at McLaren: Max Verstappen won the Grand Prix of Italy and awakened memories of his dominance of the past few years. The Red Bull Pilot prevailed in Monza with almost 20 seconds ahead of Lando Norris and Oscar Piatri-and a team order caused a sensation for the two McLaren rivals.
Norris was comfortable in second place in front of Piatri, then the team missed a pit stop, the Briton fell back to third place shortly before the end. The team then reported to Piatri: “Please let Lando over again.” Piatri reluctantly sounded, “the pit stop is normal part of the race?” He sparked. But he let the team rival through and could no longer endanger him on the following rounds.
In the end, his first Grand Prix victory this year and the first in almost four months. In the World Cup, he no longer plays a role as the overall knuckle, with the title rivals in the Papaya cars little: Norris approached Piatri by three points, but still has 31 points behind.
Hülkenberg fails before the start
The Ferrari pilots could not meet the high expectations of the Tifosi, Charles Leclerc was fourth in front of George Russell in Mercedes. Record world champion Lewis Hamilton took sixth place. Nico Hülkenberg could not even start the race in the clean – a problem with hydraulics forced it to withdraw at the very short notice.
Verstappen had started the race for the first time since the beginning of July with the advantage of pole position, but also fought against a small curse: five times in a row, the pole setting had not won the race in Monza. However, one was quite confident at Red Bull about the prospects for race Sunday – and it quickly became clear that this resulted in a good self -assessment.
“What does this idiot do?”
Verstappen had problems at the start, Norris sat next to him, it became confusing. First, Norris got off the route, in the first harassment of Verstappen and only stayed in front. “What does this idiot do?” Norris scolded on the radio: “He presses me on the grass and then he cuts the curve.”
Soon the command stand at Verstappen reported and instructed him to give up the position to prevent a punishment. The world champion did that, left Norris over – but only won the tour two rounds later.
Afterwards he was the fastest man in the field until the race half time, and was soon six seconds ahead of Norris. He, in turn, set up a similar buffer in front of Piatri, who had to deal with Leclerc only in the wild initial phase.
As chaotic as the beginning of the race, it was now in order. The situation was sorted, in the top group they hesitated all their pit stops so as not to miss the advantage of a possible safety car phase.
Only in the last third of the race Verstappen got new tires, he fell behind the two McLaren.