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Italian Grand Prix: The people’s race
It’s an hour since the Italian Grand Prix finished and there’s a patriotic sing-song going on down below me on the track.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Ferrari had won at Monza, rather than managing a competent third in a week when their president Sergio Marchionne said the team had (yet again) failed.
While the tifosi celebrated seeing Sebastian Vettel’s red shirt on the lowest step of the podium, you can be sure El Commendante was mulling over to whom the horse’s head would be despatched.
Ciao, Maurizio Arrivabene?
Who else has learned lessons this weekend?
Nico, Lewis, keeping the title interesting
On the face of it, this was a great weekend for Rosberg, thanks to Hamilton messing up another start and gifting him the win.
Rosberg didn’t put a wheel wrong and even managed to win over (most of…) the fans who booed his appearance on the podium. It was a cracking Sunday for him.
But Saturday… Hamilton fair skelped him, as we say in Scotland. He was fastest in every qualifying session and finished the day half a second ahead.
On any day that would be impressive but on a track with so few corners, it is a properly crushing performance.
I had to double-check the timing sheets to make sure there hadn’t been a mistake – Lewis had indeed, in his own words, ‘brought his A-game’.
Shame he forgot to bring it for the start of the race proper. Still, from a championship perspective, this trims his lead back to two points and keeps the pressure equally on both Mercedes drivers.
Let’s see who cracks first…
Valtteri, Daniel, keeping the race interesting
There weren’t many Sunday highlights – that’s never really a surprise at Monza, which scores highly on atmosphere and history, but often becomes a procession rather than a race.
But the Williams Martini team were cheered to see Valtteri Bottas keeping Daniel Ricciardo honest in the Red Bull.
After edging Ricciardo by just a thousandth of a second in qualifying, Bottas held the amiable Aussie off until lap 47 of 53. But then a fantastic piece of driving saw Ricciardo sweep past the Williams at the first chicane – and an equally fantastic piece of driving from Bottas meant the daring manoeuvre didn’t end in a crash.
Bottas braked late and had ‘pressed all the buttons’ to get maximum power from his Mercedes engine, but it wasn’t enough.
Still, sixth place for the Williams driver was an acceptable result on what was a huge weekend for his team.
Lead sponsor Martini is based near Monza and, as a result, was entertaining a huge number of guests.
After the news of Felipe Massa’s retirement broke on Thursday, there was relief that the Italian weekend ended on a high note.
Massa himself finished a slightly disappointing ninth but still scored a couple of valuable points for the team, who have retaken fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship from Force India.
Button, keeping himself interesting
The big news for British fans this weekend was that Jenson Button was retiring… sorry, taking a year’s sabbatical… from F1 racing next season.
To mark his announcement, Button put in one of his best performances in recent times, despite having a horrible start and slipping from 14th to 20th.
He clawed his way back up to finish 12th, passing Alonso on lap 44 and pulling away from McLaren’s other former World Champion.
It was, in many ways, a typical Button performance. When he’s comfortable with how a car is set up, Button can extract everything from it, and that’s what he did in Monza, despite his McLaren still being too slow to challenge for points.
The tifosi, keeping everything interesting
There is no other crowd like a Monza crowd, and no location like this royal park on the outskirts of Milan.
From giant Ferrari banners and spray-painted messages of adulation and protest on the main stand, to the rousing renditions of Seven Nation Army borrowed from the country’s football terraces, Italy’s fans bring a cup final feel to F1.
They are unashamedly partisan: when Rosberg and Hamilton crossed the line to take first and second places, I wondered if there was actually another lap to complete, so muted was the crowd’s response.
Then Vettel crossed in third place and, in an instant, cheers drowned out the noise of the cars.
Next came the traditional track invasion, tens of thousands of tifosi (it simply means ‘fans’) filling the start-finish straight as far as the eye could see.
Someone naughty lobbed a red smoke cannister on to the podium, two enormous Ferrari banners were passed over the top of the crowd, the whole place was red and cheering.
If you were watching this race at home, you’d probably nodded off ages ago but, here, at the track, this was the best bit. Noise, happiness, passion.
Passion – it’s what’s so often missing from F1 and it’s one of the reasons why the Italian Grand Prix is so significant.
Another reason is Monza’s great history – and the news that F1 is not, after all, dumping Monza from the calendar, was greeted in Milan with glasses of fizzy.
And glasses of Martini, of course – as they say, when in Milan, do as the Milanese do.
