Monza reaffirms Red Bull's dominance: Verstappen makes it 10 in a row!

After a very positive qualifying for Ferrari, as promised Max Verstappen re-establishes the hierarchies and wins the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, in an absolutely dominant way. The second place of his teammate Perez thus allows Red Bull to obtain the sixth one-two of the season, another indicator - if any were needed - of the level of domination exhibited this year by the English-Austrian team.

This is the final classification of the Italian Grand Prix:

Analysis of the race: a podium fought almost on equal terms between Perez, Sainz and Leclerc

Before the start of the Grand Prix it was clear that the prefereed strategy would also be the one recommended by Pirelli, i.e. the single pit stop one. That's exactly what happened, so the analysis of the 53 laps in Monza (which immediately became 51 due to a problem with Tsunoda's Alpha Tauri in the formation lap) has somewhat lost the pit stop strategy as a key element, mainly focusing on technical themes such as straight line speed and tyre management.

As you can see from the Pirelli infographic, in addition to the multitude of single pit stop strategies, it's also clear the absence of the use of Soft tyres, with the C5 compound evidently judged too weak to withstand the loads of an entire stint of around 20 laps.

Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Having already mentioned the shortening of the race by 2 laps following the technical problem that immediately put Yuki Tsunoda out of the race, the drivers on the first rows of the grid kept their positions at the start, with Sainz holding his pole position ahead of Verstappen, Leclerc, Russell and Perez. From the first laps it was clear how the Spaniard's SF-23 was starting to struggle with the tyres in an attempt to keep the World Champion's RB19 at bay. In fact, around lap 3 the latter informed his track engineer Lambiase how Sainz was in trouble with the rear end of his car.

Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Despite this, Carlos was able to defend his first position for 15 laps... Only the small lockup in the "Prima Variante" (Turn 1-2) that you see above allowed Max to take a better line and overtake him a few hundred meters later, at the "Variante della Roggia" (Turn 4-5). The 15 laps in the lead, in hindsight, gave an excellent measure of the driving level exhibited by Sainz during the entire race: especially when defending, his moves were textbook, both with Verstappen and - in the last laps - with Perez and Leclerc.

"Our wing is based on a certain project, and since we didn't have too low downforce wings, we had to adapt to the DRS (which we usually don't always keep open in the race). Tyre management was good today too, but due to the wing I had to keep my patience trying to induce a mistake from Carlos: when I saw that lockup I knew I'd have a good opportunity out of Turn 2 [...] I never thought it was possible to win 10 GPs in a row, I'm incredibly proud of the whole team because this season is incredible. This year I always say to enjoy what we are doing, because I don't think other seasons like this happen too often"

Max Verstappen

When, after the first and only round of pit stops (between lap 19 and 21) the leading drivers returned on track on new Hard tyres, the sheer speed of Red Bull began to brand the Grand Prix. While Verstappen opened a gap of about 10 seconds to avoid problems in case od a Virtual Safety Car (a possibility that never happened, however), Perez began his comeback.

After getting rid of Russell already in the first stint on the Mediums - which wasn't easy given that he had to spend as many laps as Verstappen needed to get the better of Sainz - Checo started to set laptimes a few tenths faster than the Ferrari duo, first by getting rid of Leclerc (even quite quickly), and then concentrating on the hunt for Sainz.

Italian GP - Race pace held by the first 4 classified (Verstappen, Perez, Sainz, Leclerc)

Italian GP - Race pace held by the first 4 classified (Verstappen, Perez, Sainz, Leclerc)

The Monegasque's race tactic was in any case intelligent, because he exploited the use of the DRS behind Perez to get once again close to his teammate. We could say that, given the almost identical race pace kept by the two Ferrari drivers, those laps in which Charles benefited from the DRS were the only possible way to close the gap of about 2 seconds from the sister car.

"I did everything I could, even more in the first 10 or 15 laps! I suffered a lot with tyre management in both stints, in the last 5 laps of both I reached the limit with the tyres... But I think today it was the day to be daring and not to think about managing the tyres. It almost cost me the podium to have pushed so hard, but it was better to try to keep the Red Bulls behind than not to try at all. With Charles there was a good but clean fight, also because with your teammate the only thing you don't want is to risk a contact, especially here in Monza! [...] I thank the fans who came here and in the hotel to cheer, it was the best weekend of my career in Ferrari..."

Carlos Sainz

“The race was fun from the cockpit, but for you who saw it from the outside, between the fans and Vasseur, you must have experienced it with two or three heart attacks! I love when Formula 1 is like this, with this kind of battle... Carlos was at the limit defending and I was limiting attacking, but that's what I like about this sport. It was a fun race, just a shame not to be on the podium. Carlos got there and he has to enjoy this special moment in his career [...] When I put on the Hard tyres, I tried to manage them for the last part of the race by keeping Perez behind, like in the first stint, but it was extremely difficult because the Red Bulls had more pace than us: in the end, third and fourth is the best result we could have achieved!"

Charles Leclerc

Even against Perez, as previously mentioned, Sainz's defense was masterful, until - just 5 laps from the end - Carlos had to surrender due to the better tyre wear guaranteed by his rival's Red Bull RB19: from then on, he saw again the Mexican just after the checquered flag. The last 3 laps, then, were a proper show for Formula 1 lovers: a straight fight between Sainz and Leclerc in the same single-seater, in which they gave everything. The opportunity of a podium in front of the Ferrarista crowd in Monza was too tempting to think about the potential risks of a crash...

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

On a couple of occasions the two avoided contact by a few centimetres, but - after a last gasp attempt by Leclerc at the start of the last lap - they reached the finish line with the Spaniard just 0.184 s ahead of the Monegasque.

Mercedes in "no man's land" and Albon (P7) is the best of the rest

With the first 4 places "reserved" by Red Bull and Ferrari, the fight for fifth place was resolved in favor of George Russell's Mercedes, who, taking advantage of the fourth position on the grid and an excellent start, experienced a race as frenetic in the first stint as solitary in the second one...

In fact, the priority in the first 15 laps was to keep Perez's Red Bull behind him, a task in which he succedeed mainly by virtue of the not so effective (for all cars) DRS in low downforce conditions such as in Monza... Once that Perez was able to overtake him, George's only objective was to take the W14 to the finish line: the leaders were too far away and impossible to catch up with, while the cars behind him were jammed in a DRS train whose locomotive was the Williams of Alex Albon.

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

The same Albon finished the race in seventh place, giving up the position only to a Lewis Hamilton in full comeback. The English-Thai driver's race was as solid as often happened this year, and just like in Canada and on other occasions he took full advantage of the high straight line speed of his Williams FW46: this literally dictated the pace of the cars behind him, and that there was little they could do to overtake him despite being more efficient in the few corners in Monza.

Italian GP - Race pace held by Hamilton (P6), Albon (P7), Norris (P8) and Piastri (P12)

Italian GP - Race pace held by Hamilton (P6), Albon (P7), Norris (P8) and Piastri (P12)

As can be seen from the graph, in fact, while Hamilton's pace improved in the final laps (thanks to the overtake on Albon and a strategy that saw him with the Medium tyres in the second stint), Norris's pace was forced to match the laptimes of the number 23 Williams. It was a different story for Piastri, however, who in the final stages even set the fastest lap of the race: the Aussie, only in P12 at the finish line, was forced to make an additional pit stop due to a contact at the "Variante della Roggia" with the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton. The 7-times World Champion, guilty of a defense in which he left too little room for Oscar, immediately apologized to the latter, leaving no room for excuses for what happened...

"Every point we get in these races is incredibly hard-fought. Today we started on the Hard tyres, but at the beginning it was difficult to follow the train of cars with the DRS. I spent a lot of laps following the McLarens, I knew I had a pace slightly superior to theirs in the first stint and I was hoping to catch them in the second. There was a big gap to make up and I was afraid my tyres would wear out in the comeback, but luckily theirs did the same [...] The incident with Piastri was just unfortunate, I misjudged the gap from him and it was all my fault, I went to apologize to him right after"

Lewis Hamilton

A thrilling ending for Verstappen: problems with his Power Unit?

Before concluding the analysis of the GP held in Monza, we couldn't fail to dwell on an episode in which Max Verstappen was very lucky. In the last 3 laps, with the result almost acquired, we saw a sudden drop in his laptimes, which brought his advantage over teammate Perez from 12 seconds to 6 seconds at the finish line.

The team radio transcript between Max and Giampiero Lambiase doesn't clarify the nature of the issue, but shows the concern in the Red Bull garage... Only at the end of the race did it become known that the above-mentioned problem was linked to the temperatures of his Power Unit, and that it was probably of a similar nature to the one that occurred on Tsunoda's Alpha Tauri, who was decidedly less fortunate in the epilogue of his race.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Ironically, without the shortening of the race by 2 laps, Perez probably would have had enough time to catch Max and win the race; on the other hand, we can't even exclude that the temperature increase could have got worse and cause a DNF fot the Dutchman!

Luckily for Verstappen, circumstances allowed him to bring home a well-deserved tenth consecutive race win (as well as number 12 of the season), and enjoy the wonderful atmosphere under the podium at Monza.

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