F1
The reigning F1 world champion ends a rough run at the Italian Grand Prix, winning his fifth Grand Prix on the bounce at a track where success for Oracle Red Bull Racing has been elusive.
Forget the form guide, ignore the points table: the Italian Grand Prix loomed as Max Verstappen's biggest test of the season.
Yes, the Oracle Red Bull Racing star came to Monza on a run of four straight race wins, had 10 victories for the season and enjoyed a 109-point Formula One world championship lead. However, Monza and Max have never gone well together, but as this year has proved at most stops on the calendar, history and hoodoos are a thing of the past.
Before Sunday, Verstappen had led a grand total of one lap (last year) at Monza, had never finished better than fifth in seven races at the famed Italian circuit, and hadn't even seen the chequered flag the past two years. The Dutchman righted those wrongs in emphatic style, taking the lead on Lap 12 when pole-sitter Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) pitted, and then repelling every speed and strategic challenge Ferrari threw at him to see the view from the sport's most iconic podium for the first time.
In keeping with Verstappen's previously bizarre record at Monza, the race finished at a crawl behind the safety car after a late retirement for Daniel Ricciardo left the Australian's McLaren stranded on track. It wasn't the outpouring of emotion at full racing speed Verstappen wanted, but it was 25 world championship points nonetheless.
The victory was Red Bull's first at Monza since 2013 and the team's 12th for the season; with six races to go, the 2013 high-water mark for the team (13 wins) is tantalisingly within reach.
For Verstappen, who takes a 116-point championship lead into the next race and can mathematically clinch a second successive world title in Singapore, his 11th win of the year usurped the 10 victories of last season. His 31st win in total saw him draw level with British great Nigel Mansell for seventh all-time in the F1 history books.
Leclerc, who made two pit stops to Verstappen's one in an attempt to get back on terms with the rampant Red Bull pilot, finished second in front of Ferrari's boisterous tifosi. George Russell had another strong run in what has been a first season of consistency at Mercedes, coming home in third place.
Verstappen's team-mate Sergio Pérez had a more difficult race from 13th on the grid, but it was one that ended with points and plaudits after coming home sixth and earning an extra world championship point by setting the fastest lap on Lap 46 of 53
Here's how Verstappen banished his Italian GP demons at Monza.
Decisive start leads to happy ending for Max
With his so-so Monza record and a jumbled-up grid, Verstappen was right to be wary of his chances for Sunday's race. Three practice sessions showed he had the pace, but the Italian Grand Prix tends to be dictated by Saturday qualifying – and he had work to do from seventh on the grid after an engine penalty dropped him from the front row.
Before Sunday, 15 of the past 22 winners had started from pole position, and Monza has a way of throwing up surprise results. In 2019, Leclerc won just his second Grand Prix, while Pierre Gasly took his maiden (and so far only) F1 victory for Scuderia AlphaTauri 12 months later. Last year, Ricciardo won his first Grand Prix since 2018 – and McLaren's first in nine years.
A raft of engine and gearbox-related penalties affecting nine of the 20 drivers meant that the qualifying results had little relevance to the line-up of the grid for Sunday's 53-lap race. Only pole-sitter Leclerc began the race from where he'd qualified. The situation was so confusing that a starting grid wasn't decided upon until three hours following the one-hour qualifying session.
In the wash-up, Verstappen took off from seventh after qualifying second, Pérez from 13th after finishing fourth in Q3, and fast front-runners Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) and Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) began from the very back.
In the wash-up, Verstappen's getaway and first laps were the key. Fifth into the first corner, Verstappen was inside the top three within two laps and had pace and tyre life in reserve. Leclerc pitted on Lap 12 under a Virtual Safety Car when Sebastian Vettel's Aston Martin expired, but Verstappen stayed out until Lap 25, gapping the Monegasque with relentless ease.
Ferrari pitted Leclerc again to give him fresher, softer tyres for the final 20 laps, but Verstappen never blinked, keeping the lead comfortably until Ricciardo's late retirement bunched up the field. It slashed his winning advantage to a touch over two seconds, but it was a margin that underplayed his dominance.
"We had a great race," Verstappen beamed afterwards.
"On every (tyre) compound, we were quickest, and the deg (degradation) was good, so we had a really good race car. We were controlling the gap at the end, but then the safety car came out … unfortunately we didn't get a restart, but overall we had a really good day.
"The start was very good, and I had a clean chicane, and then I could quickly get back into my rhythm and get into second (place). It was really enjoyable to drive today even if it was hot out there, so a great day for us.
"It took a bit of time to be on a great podium like this, but finally we're on it."
Checo goes into recovery mode
Pérez has shown himself as a driver who isn't easily deterred throughout his long F1 career and demonstrated that fighting spirit again on Sunday after numerous speed bumps to storm back into the points.
Fourth on the grid after qualifying, the Mexican was demoted to 13th on the grid after taking new engine components outside of his permitted allocation for the season, and got elbowed back down the order in the manic opening exchanges. An earlier-than-scheduled Lap 7 pit stop for hard tyres – which saw him return to the track with smoke billowing from his right-front brakes – saw him drop to last place, and a possible retirement loomed.
Pérez played the long game from there, picking off rivals as they pitted and barely putting a foot wrong. He made his hard tyres last for 35 laps, pitted for soft rubber for the final 11 laps to the chequered flag, and set the race's fastest lap four laps later as he took off after Hamilton's Mercedes, reeling in the seven-time world champion before the safety car pressed pause on any further progress before the end.
Sixth place was Pérez's 11th consecutive finish at Monza – he's not retired there since his 2011 rookie season – and he stayed in third place in the drivers' championship, nine points behind Leclerc and seven ahead of Russell for best of the rest status behind Verstappen.
Oracle Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner praised Pérez's perseverance.
"We had to pit him early because he had an enormous flat spot (on his tyres) and there was a vibration that was getting safety-critical," Horner explained.
"There was a bit of debris that got into one of the (brake) ducts and you could see the fire that created, but his recovery from there was great.
"Fastest lap as well … important points for him and the team."
Gasly helps AlphaTauri bridge the gap
Scuderia AlphaTauri had its strongest race since round eight of the season in Baku, an eighth-place finish for Gasly, seeing the squad draw to within a single point of Haas for seventh in the constructors' championship on a day where pursuing rival Aston Martin had both drivers (Vettel and Lance Stroll) retire from the race.
Gasly qualified ninth, started fifth after the penalties for rivals were applied, and the 2020 Italian GP victor spent the entire race harrying Ricciardo before the McLaren's engine shut down, leap-frogging the Australian into 11th place in the drivers' standings.
Monza was more difficult for Gasly's team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, the Japanese driver making his maiden Italian GP start after brake issues saw him not even take to the grid 12 months ago.
Tsunoda started from the very back because of a host of penalties – 10 places for accumulating five reprimands over the season from the stewards, three places for failing to slow for yellow flags in practice, and a further 10 places as a penalty for engine component changes – and came home 14th after never running higher than 12th across the 53 laps.
Dutchman De Vries makes dream debut
Elsewhere, Nyck De Vries made a last-minute appearance for Williams when Alex Albon was ruled out with appendicitis just before final practice on Saturday, the 27-year-old's long-awaited F1 debut coming in the strangest of circumstances.
De Vries, the 2019 F2 champion and 2020-21 Formula E titlist, took over Sebastian Vettel's Aston Martin for the first practice session at Monza as part of the sport's remit to give drivers on the outer some relevant seat time on a race weekend. The Mercedes-affiliated driver then spent second practice as an observer in the Silver Arrows' garage, only getting the nod that he'd be racing for Williams while sipping on a cappuccino in the Mercedes hospitality tent 90 minutes before the final hour-long practice.
Williams hastily made changes to its FW44 machine to accommodate De Vries, who at 167cm is 19cm shorter than Albon, and some race overalls were made in record-quick time. By Saturday night, the Dutchman had qualified a credible 13th, ahead of regular Williams driver Nicholas Latifi. He started the race in eighth alongside compatriot Verstappen after penalties were applied to other drivers further up the grid.
De Vries then finished a composed ninth in Sunday's race, earning Driver of the Day honours on a debut weekend he's not likely to forget in a hurry.
Stay hydrated, Singapore is next
The Marina Bay street circuit is slower than Baku and has less history than Monaco, but is as tough as F1 road courses get. The 5.063-kilometre track snakes its way around the Lion City's most famous landmarks, and 61 laps of threading your way through 23 corners at night in stifling humidity the drivers haven't experienced since 2019 is sure to make this race a survival of the fittest, not just the fastest.
Verstappen has a second place (2018) and a third (2019) to his name in Singapore – there's a logical progression there to suggest what comes next – while Pérez hasn't scored in the city-state since 2017, when he took his best result in nine starts with a fighting fifth place for Force India.
