If at any point on Sunday you looked at your television and thought it was 2023 again, you were not alone.
That season, Max Verstappen and the RB19 dominated the Formula 1 world, as the Red Bull driver won all but three grands prix en route to his third consecutive Drivers’ Championship. It was a nearly flawless campaign, one where Verstappen ran away from the entire field almost every single week.
He did that on Sunday in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, in a year where the RB21 is certainly not the class of the field, and where Red Bull are looking up at three teams in the standings.
But that is the brilliance of Verstappen, who set an F1 record on Saturday with the fastest qualifying lap in the 75-year history of the sport. He made more history on Sunday, as the Italian Grand Prix was the fastest race in F1 history. Verstappen’s circuit around the historic circuit clocked in with a total race time of 1:13:24.325, eclipsing the mark of 1:14:19.838 set back in 2003 when Sebastian Vettel took the victory at Monza.
Verstappen also averaged 250.706 km/h or 155.791 mph during his win, setting another Formula 1 record.
Like 2023, and like Saturday, Verstappen was nearly flawless in the race. There was a moment after the lights went out that opened the door for one of his rivals, but Verstappen quickly slammed that door shut. Battling Lando Norris off the start, Verstappen went off the racing line to hold onto the lead, but was instructed by Red Bull to give the position back.
Verstappen did, but quickly regained the lead with an overtake of Norris, and he did not look back. He pumped in fastest lap after fastest lap, ultimately building a lead over Norris of over six seconds.
That gap allowed Verstappen and Red Bull to stick with their preferred one-stop strategy of a medium-to-hard race, while it forced McLaren to alter their plans. Both Norris and Oscar Piastri ran long on their initial set of medium tires, hoping for intervention in the form of a Safety Car or a red flag.
But when the racing gods did not provide such an intervention, they pitted late for soft tires.
Those tires were still enough to close the gap to Verstappen, who took the checkered flag 19 seconds ahead of Norris in second.
After the race, Verstappen was not ready to declare Red Bull “back,” noting that results like Sunday’s win might be circuit-specific.
“I think it’s still a bit track-dependent. Here you drive low downforce. It always seems like our car is a little bit more competitive when it’s low- to medium-downforce,” said Verstappen in the FIA Press Conference after the Italian Grand Prix. “So it’s not like suddenly now we are back. It’s not like we can fight, I think, every single weekend. But the positive is that we seem to understand a little bit more what we need to do with the car to be more competitive.
“So I hope that that carries on into the coming rounds as well, and some tracks will be a bit better than others.”
Monza’s low-downforce, high-speed characteristics might suit the RB21, and upcoming races such as the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and the Las Vegas Grand Prix could very well serve as fertile ground for Verstappen and the RB21.
Those might not be enough for Verstappen to close the gap to Piastri and Norris in the Drivers’ Championship race — he now trails Piastri by 94 points and Norris by 63 points — but days like today are another reminder of his sheer brilliance behind the wheel.
How is this for a statistic?
Over the last five races, only five drivers (Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris, Max Verstappen, George Russell, and Charles Leclerc) have outscored Alexander Albon.
Over that stretch, Albon finished eighth at the British Grand Prix, sixth at the Belgian Grand Prix, fifth at the Dutch Grand Prix, and seventh at the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday. Only a P15 at the Hungarian Grand Prix broke up that stretch of finishes in the points for the Williams driver.
Albon was impressive at Monza yet again, finishing in the points at the Italian Grand Prix for the third consecutive season. He started down in P14 after being knocked out in Q2 Saturday, but was the lead car on the hard compound, which gave him and Williams some strategy options, and he did not put a foot wrong as he delivered six massive points for the team as they look to hold on to P5 in the Constructors’ Championship standings.
“A great result from Alex for that P7 and some nice points against our competitors in what will be a very close-fought championship. We had a very fast racing car today and what that demonstrates is we’ve got to get qualifying right – we are not getting it nailed on and in such a tight grid it makes an enormous difference,” said Team Principal James Vowles in the team’s post-race report.
Vowles then added “Alex drove a faultless race on the Hard tires.”
Williams has their eyes on the 2026 season, when the incoming regulation changes arrive to potentially shake up the pecking order. Yet, they still lead the way in the midfield, and results like Sunday’s from Albon are a massive reason why.
Rookie Isack Hadjar endured a career first on Saturday, as he was knocked out in Q1 for the first time all season. After Visa Cash App Racing Bulls made some changes to his car under parc ferme conditions, he was forced to start from pit lane.
But the VCARB rookie made the most of his day at Monza, fighting through the field and back into the top ten for a P10.
That performance left his boss struggling to find the right words.
“It’s the second race in a row that I’m a little bit lost for words,” said VCARB Team Principal Alan Permane. “It was a faultless race and an incredible drive from Isack; starting from the pitlane and finishing in the points.
“We knew with our starting position today, that our race was going to be about damage limitation and that’s exactly what happened. The reverse strategy, coupled with his strong pace, worked very well for Isack, allowing him to take the final point of the race.”
With both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll finishing out of the points, VCARB cut their deficit to Aston Martin to just a single point, as they now trail Aston Martin 62 to 61 in the fight for sixth in the Constructors’ Championship.
A week ago at the Dutch Grand Prix Haas found a way to get both Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman into the points, despite their drivers starting at the back of the grid.
They could not deliver similar magic on Sunday at Monza.
Despite Bearman starting in P11 and Ocon starting in P15, Haas leaves Italy behind without a point to show for their efforts, as Bearman could only manage a 12th-place finish, and Ocon finished where he started.
As Team Principal Ayao Komatsu noted in his post-race comments, penalties were part of the story. Bearman was hit with a ten-second penalty for causing a collision with Carlos Sainz Jr., while Ocon incurred a five-second penalty for an incident with Lance Stroll.
“It’s a shame that we didn’t score points because we knew we were up against it in Monza, but considering that, I think we fought well today and the team worked well together. I’m not going to dwell on the penalties – we accept them, and move on – win or lose, we do it together,” said Komatsu. “The positive thing is that knowing Monza is one of our weakest circuits, we still fought hard and I’m happy with how we operated as a team.”
Perhaps more worrisome for the team is Bearman’s penalty status. In addition to the ten-second penalty, the rookie driver was given two penalty points on his FIA Super Licence.
That brings his current total to ten, two points shy of a one-race penalty ban. And with the first points on his FIA Super License not set to expire until early November, ahead of the São Paulo Grand Prix, the rookie will need to navigate four race weekends — including an F1 Sprint race at the United States Grand Prix — without further incident.
Winner: Gabriel Bortoleto
While teammate Nico Hülkenberg was knocked out of qualifying in Q2, rookie Gabriel Bortoleto carried the Sauber banner into Q3, where he ultimately qualified eighth.
He started seventh due to Lewis Hamilton’s five-place grid penalty, but managed to stay inside the top ten to deliver an eighth-place finish, banking four critical points for Sauber as they look to keep pace in the midfield fight.
“Gabriel delivered a fantastic performance,” hailed Team Principal Jonathan Wheatley. “He showed pace and composure on every lap, and while it was always going to be difficult to keep [Alexander] Albon behind on new mediums, getting stuck behind Gasly for a couple of laps ultimately made the difference. Nothing should be taken away from Gabriel’s drive — he scored valuable points, closed the gap to the team ahead, and can take a lot of confidence from his weekend.
”Overall, the performance gives us real encouragement as we rebuild, refocus, and push into the flyaways.”
The rookie driver called the result the “best” Sauber could have achieved in Monza.
“We had a very solid race, with good calls and good strategy. My pit stop was a bit slow, but I also put this on me, because I possibly arrived a bit too long in the pit box and it definitely didn’t help,” said Bortoleto. “Overall, I am happy to have finished eighth and have made it back in the points: this is also important for the Constructors’ Championship.
”I am obviously hungry for more, but I believe this is the best we could have achieved this weekend – it’s been a consistent, productive one, and a good way to close the European leg of the season.”
While Gabriel Bortoleto found his way into the points, teammate Nico Hülkenberg got an early start on his post-race shower.
Perhaps even before the lights went out.
Hülkenberg was told to box and retire the car during the formation lap, as his C45 had suffered an issue with the hydraulic system, a terminal failure.
“Sometimes it’s difficult to enjoy the job across both drivers when we face a situation like today, with Nico sidelined by a hydraulic issue that prevented him from starting. It’s something we need to fully understand and resolve,” said Team Principal Jonathan Wheatley in Sauber’s post-race report.
This marks the fourth race in a row that Hülkenberg has finished outside the points. Since his emotional podium at the British Grand Prix — his first F1 podium in 239 F1 race starts — Hülkenberg has finished 12th, 13th, 14th, and now he failed to even start on Sunday.
“Obviously it’s extremely frustrating if you don’t even get to start the race. We experienced hydraulic issues that forced us to retire the car on the formation lap, which we now need to properly investigate and understand in detail,” outlined Hülkenberg.
”That said, we’ve clearly seen there is performance in the car, which gives us encouragement. Monza is always a difficult place to overtake, so it’s hard to say where we would have ended up today. On the positive side, it was a good weekend for Gabi, who scored valuable points for the team.“
Aston Martin did not have high expectations entering the Italian Grand Prix, as the high-speed, low-downforce elements of the Monza circuit did not play to the strengths of the AMR25.
Fernando Alonso gave the team a little hope on Saturday, as he fought into Q3 and lined up eighth on the grid when the lights went out. But any hopes were dashed on Lap 25, when Alonso took a little more kerb at Turn 10, and the front suspension on his challenger failed:
“Suspension failure. This is unbelievable,” reported Alonso from the AMR25.
Stroll came across the line in P18, the final car still in the race.
With both Alonso and Stroll finishing out of the points, and Isack Hadjar picking up a point with his P10 finish, Aston Martin saw their lead in the Constructors’ Championship standings over VCARB cut to a single point.
Comment of the day from The Feed
We close this out with a new feature here at SB Nation.
A shoutout to the Comment of the Day from The Feed’s open thread from the Italian Grand Prix. It comes to us from angrobper14, who has been doing tremendous work in the F1 open threads on The Feed in recent weeks.
This tremendous comment and breakdown gives us the perfect opportunity to address the elephant in the room.
How the race ended for McLaren.
You did not think we would avoid that, did you?
With Max Verstappen driving away from Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri over the opening stint, McLaren was forced to adjust their approach to the Italian Grand Prix. Instead of using the standard medium-hard approach that Verstappen implemented in front of them, McLaren had both Norris and Piastri go long on their initial set of medium tires, hoping for intervention in the way of a Safety Car.
When that intervention did not come, McLaren pitted both Piastri and Norris for soft tires.
Here is where things start to go off track a bit for the team. Rather than pit Norris first, as you often see teams do with the lead driver on the track, they brought Piastri in first. The stated reason from McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella? They were worried about Charles Leclerc, who was running in fourth on a relatively fresh set of hard tires.
“This is something I will review with the strategy team,” said Stella after the race.
“The strategy team elaborated that that was the right sequencing because there could have been some threat for Oscar. We will review the numbers and we will check whether that was necessary or not.”
In reality, McLaren might have still been worried about a Safety Car situation. Had they pitted Norris first, and then a Safety Car came out before Piastri’s pit stop, Piastri would have ended up ahead of Norris.
In their efforts to keep things fair, McLaren pitted Piastri first, followed by Norris.
But what they did not anticipate was a problem with the left front on Norris’ pit stop, which led to a stop of nearly six seconds. When the British driver returned to the track, he was behind Piastri and sitting in third.
Shortly after the order came to Piastri: Swap places with Norris.
Stella called it a matter of “fairness” and “consistency with [McLaren’s] principles” after the race.
“The pit stop situation is not only a matter of fairness, it’s a matter of consistency with our principles,” Stella said. “And however the championship goes, what’s important is that the championship runs within the principles and the racing values that we have at McLaren, and that we have created together with our drivers.
”The fact that we went first with Oscar, compounded by the slow pit stop of Lando, then led to a swap of positions. And we thought it was absolutely the right thing to go back to the situation pre-existing the pit stop, and then let the guys race.
“This is what we did, and this is what we think is in compliance with our principles.”
While Piastri initially disagreed with the order — and the team invoked last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix when issuing it, which left everyone in the F1TV commentary booth as well as those watching on home a little uncomfortable — he soon gave way.
And after the race, both he and Norris pointed to those team principles as well.
“It’s something that we’ll discuss. We have discussed it before. I think today was a fair request. Lando qualified ahead, was ahead the whole race, and lost that spot through no fault of his own,” said Piastri in the post-race FIA Press Conference. “I said what I had to say on the radio. And once I got the second request, then I’m not going to go against the team. I think there’s a lot of people to protect and a culture to protect outside of just Lando and I.
“Ultimately that’s a very important thing going forward.”
Norris was of a similar mindset.
“Every situation is different, so it’s pretty stupid just to assume that kind of thing and say that’s the precedent you set. We’re not idiots and we have plans for different things. If there were four cars in between me and Oscar, of course he’s not going to let me back past, and I don’t think it’s correct that he let me back past,” began Norris.
”But in a situation where we weren’t racing, in a situation where we can just be fair, then you’d expect to be fair, as a team. They don’t want to be the reason to upset one driver or another through no fault of their own, you know. Today was not my fault. If I came flat-out into my box and I hit all my mechanics out the way, I also don’t expect to get the position back, but today was out of my control.
“In the end, I don’t want to win this way through getting given positions or anything like that. And the same thing with Oscar—we don’t want to lose or win like that. But we do what we think is correct as a team, no matter what you say or what your opinions are, and we stick to doing it our way,” concluded the British driver.
There are a few ways to look at this situation.
On the one hand, McLaren may have set a dangerous precedent here. Where will the team draw the line going forward? For example, during the British Grand Prix, Piastri was assessed what he believed was a harsh penalty for breaking behind the Safety Car. Over the radio with McLaren, he noted that if the team agreed with him on the penalty, then he could swap places with Norris.
However, that order never came.
Where will McLaren draw the line? Asked about the decision, Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff addressed the idea of setting a precedent.
”You set a precedent that is very difficult to undo. What if the team does another mistake and it’s not a pit stop, do you switch them around? But then equally, because of a team mistake, making a driver that is trying to catch up, lose the points, is not fair either,” began the Mercedes boss.
“So I think we are going to get our response of whether that was right today towards the end of the season when it heats up.”
Ultimately, however, Wolff conceded that there may not be a right answer.
“There is no right and there is no wrong,” summarized Wolff. “And I’m curious to see how that ends up.”
The argument from McLaren may well be that the incident in Silverstone was Piastri’s mistake, and the slow pit stop was something out of Norris’ hands. That seems to be the case that McLaren’s drivers were making, and in particular Norris, in describing his pit stop and a hypothetical scenario where he barreled into the stall.
The counterargument to all of this, of course, is that this is exactly the kind of culture that Stella was hired to build in Woking. A culture where fairness between the drivers is paramount, and both Norris and Piastri are fully on board, despite how it might appear to us on the outside.
When I spoke with McLaren CEO Zak Brown in October of 2023, as McLaren began their charge up the pecking order, I asked him what prompted the turnaround.
After joking that it was simply a “faster race car,” Brown pointed to Stella, and the idea of leadership.
“We made a team principal change, and technical director and head of aero, which were effectively our three most senior positions within a racing team, and put Andrea Stella in charge.
“And what that enabled us to do was to restructure the team, empower the great talent that already existed within McLaren because I think the impressive part is the people that gave us the car at the start of the year are the same people that have given this fantastic race car that we have now.
“So we really weren’t set up for success and didn’t have the right leadership approach to getting the most out of our people, and that’s ultimately what’s changed back at the factory.”
Stella has gotten the most out of his people these past two-plus seasons, and that was reflected in what both his drivers had to say following the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday.
“We’ve said many times that we don’t want the chance of success just for this year,” began Piastri. “There’s a big regulation change next year – we don’t know how competitive we’re going to be, and we don’t know how competitive anyone’s going to be.
“Ultimately, we want the best chance at winning championships for as long as we’re Formula 1 drivers, and we’re both at McLaren for a very long time. Protecting the people around us that give us this opportunity is a very important thing,” continued the Australian driver. “It’s easy enough to put yourself second at times like that. If we were fighting very closely for the whole race, then it’s slightly different, but Lando was ahead by a few seconds the whole race, so there’s no concern for me with that.
“Again, we don’t just want this year to fight for a championship; we want it for as long as possible. Protecting the people, that includes the people doing the pit stops. It’s not a very nice feeling, I would imagine. It’s important to protect all the people that we have because that’s what gives us a championship hope for years to come.”
Norris, after praising his teammate, added his thoughts.
“That was beautiful. He said it well. I don’t need to add any more,” started Norris.
“The team is the priority. The team is number one, then the drivers are second. That’s how it works. Normally, when you see teams who don’t have enough respect for the team and the opportunities the team gives, it doesn’t normally last long,” continued Norris. “You see that with plenty of other teams, whether it’s been Red Bull, Ferrari, or Mercedes.
“We want to try and be in this position for a longer period of time than what they have been at the top. Still early days – it’s only our second year of fighting for wins. But like Oscar said, the team gives us these opportunities. Without the team, then we’re just fighting for tenth, and none of us want that. So team and the morale, the spirit of the team, is priority, and we’re below that.”
This may seem completely foreign to us on the outside, given the rich history of battles between teammates in F1 and a desire to see a Drivers’ Championship battle decided purely by racing.
But it might be exactly what McLaren wants on the inside.
