Four taking points from a thrilling Italian GP | GRR

How Hamilton lost a supposedly certain victory

A fastest ever F1 lap on Saturday secured runaway championship leader Hamilton another pole position – at 164.267mph. What could possibly stop him on Sunday? A small error of judgement, that’s what, the responsibility for which should probably be shared by both Lewis himself and his Mercedes team.

Kevin Magnussen had triggered a safety car interlude after stopping his broken Haas just before the entrance to the pitlane, leaving the marshals a headache to move it. That’s why the pitlane was closed – but in the blink of an eye Hamilton missed the signs on the left of the track coming out of Parabolica and his team failed to spot the message displayed on their screens. He coped a 10-second stop-go penalty for the error, as did Antonio Giovinazzi for the same offence in his Alfa Romeo.

Then as racing resumed, Charles Leclerc suffered a huge accident at Parabolica to end a miserable weekend for Ferrari following Sebastian Vettel’s frightening brake failure early in the race. Leclerc was able to jog from the scene, but barrier damage forced a red flag. During the break, Hamilton visited the stewards to check on his offence, but grudgingly accepted his punishment.

Hamilton took the restart from pole position, but quickly served his penalty – after which he faced an 18-second gap back to the pack. How he reined them in and despatched the backmarkers was no surprise, but to rise to seventh place, passing the likes of Sergio Pérez and Esteban Ocon, showed how sharp he remains when he is forced to actually race. To finish just two positions behind his team-mate Valtteri Bottas, who endured an awful grand prix, was an admirable piece of championship damage limitation, made sweeter by Max Verstappen’s strangely out of sorts weekend which ended in an early bath just before the safety car interruption because of Honda’s warning of a potential power unit problem. Hamilton remains 47 points ahead, but now from Bottas rather than Verstappen.

Gasly earns his ‘lucky’ win

This was a first French F1 win since Olivier Panis at Monaco way back in 1996, and came in equally dramatic and unlikely circumstances. But make no mistake, Pierre Gasly earned his victory during a season when he has already proven to be one of the drivers of the year.

The key was an early stop for fresh tyres, just before Magnussen triggered the safety car. That vaulted the AlphaTauri up the order when almost everyone else pitted under the caution period, and he was able to take the restart after the red flag in third place. Ahead of him, second place starter Lance Stroll blew his chance of victory with a poor first lap when the race got going again on lap 28 of 53, leaving Gasly to inherit the lead from Hamilton when he took his penalty. But the 24-year-old still had plenty to do as Sainz loomed.

But the leader kept his head and drove beautifully to keep the McLaren out of range, delivering his team its second victory – 12 years after Vettel scored what was then Toro Rosso’s first at the same track. Cue delirium for the Italian crew, who were just missing the mania of a home crowd to celebrate with them.

For Gasly, it’s hard to imagine just how sweet this shock victory must be. As he acknowledged, he’s had a turbulent 18 months since Red Bull gave him his F1 chance, then dropped him mid-season because of his poor performances. Demoted to the company’s second team, he has shown a great sense of character and has now settled into F1 as the accomplished rising star he was supposed to be. Given Alexander Albon’s continuing slump in both form and luck, we can’t help wondering how soon it will be before they switch places once again.

Bitter-sweet second place for Sainz

He couldn’t be unhappy with the runner-up spot and his best F1 finish to date. But at the same time, Carlos Sainz Jr. was understandably crestfallen that it was Gasly and not he who picked up the ball after a rare Mercedes/Hamilton fumble. The Spaniard had shocked everyone, perhaps even himself, by qualifying an excellent third, and following Bottas’s dreadful opening lap from the original start was running second on merit before the safety car. But he lost out in the rash of pitstops. For the second start Sainz found himself only sixth, behind Hamilton, Stroll, Gasly and the two Alfa Romeos. The McLaren ace quickly worked his way past the Italian cars and pulled a good move on Stroll, but Gasly was now too far up the road. He reduced the gap to within DRS range for the penultimate lap, but it was too late to make a move. Will he get another chance to win this year? In truth, the odds are probably better for him than they will be next season – when he switches to Ferrari.

Williams family bows out

Finally, a word on Williams. The deal to sell the team to a private investment firm, Dorilton Capital, always made it likely that things would change at F1’s third most successful team. But no one quite expected such a shift to come so quickly. The pre-weekend announcement that Frank and Claire Williams would be severing the family ties to the team directly after the Italian GP inspired a torrent of tributes, including from both Nicholas Latifi and George Russell after the pair had taken the flag in 11^th and 14^th respectively. What a sad moment for the Williams family, their beloved team and F1 as a whole. But in the midst of the emotion was an underlying acceptance that management failures and a level of form that is simply unacceptable for such a team had made it all inevitable. Who knows what comes next for the team still currently known as Williams? But harsh as it might seem, such a change is its best hope for a brighter future.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.