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Other than the record-breaking pole position from Hamilton, rest of the whole race was nothing more than mundane. Wonder what jinx is stopping Ferrari from taking the pole / grabbing the victory in the home turf since their last win in 2010.

Can't forget to mention the kind of colorful celebration organized by Italy, very one of a kind. That and the whopping 162k spectators gathered show how much of a sport is F1 to Italy ! Kudos !

Cheers,
Vijay

An okay race.

I think Hamilton is an unstoppable force now. When things are going his way - good car, good mood, good team - he is simply unbeatable. If things continue this way, my money is on him for the championship. Vettel did what he could by bringing the car home in 3rd, but that's not going to be enough. Ferrari need pace.

Does anyone else agree that F1 focuses too much on Alonso's radio? It's getting rather annoying now.

Did you notice the zone Hamilton was in after the race at Spa when he got out of the car. He was on another planet, completely focussed within himself. Been watching for ages now but never seen him that focussed. He should win his 4th drivers title barring mechanical issues.

Alonso, is a bundle of bad decisions and luck through his career after his titles at Benetton. I feel he is frustrated with his car as much as knowing the top three teams will not entertain him any more and time is running out. I completely agree too much focus on "poor" Alonso is getting irksome and boring too. He has made his bed now he has to lie in it.

Cheers

No, not really. The actual demoralizing was on Saturday. That was the lowest qualifying of this year and that too behind Force India and Lance Stroll!
We still don't take it seriously. The outscore championship is currently 55 - 28 in favor of Ferrari. Monza was a setup fiasco for Ferrari, not due to any technical advantage gained by Red Bull. True, had it not been the penalties, Ricciardo (not Max, he would have found someone else to crash into and hoping it would not be Ricciardo in Italy - he needs a break!) would have finished before both the Ferraris in Italy. Red Bull was trailing in FP1 and FP2, it was just a Ferrari glitch for the Qualifying.
I'll go for the latter, it was unforgivable for the home race. Kimi was struggling to keep his car on track and Seb was lucky to get to the podium after the charge from Ricciardo. I switched to the India-SL ODI and my daughter asked, "Ferrari doing that bad?". I can imagine what the Tifosi would feel in Monza.

Max. is trying hard to make Mr. Horner lose his argument on outscoring Ferrari.:D
How much he succeeds in it is to be seen.

An advantage that Ferrari has is the consistency of their drivers.clap:
And a clear strategy for deciding the track position when the two drivers race close together.

The shorter wheel base might be of use at Singapore against the Mercs.
Hope Lewis doesn't run away with the title charge.

Being a Ferrari fan is not so bad right now.
Actually very good, when you compare to being a McLaren fan.
Although the Spec 3.7 Honda PU seems to be able to harvest and deploy more during the race as seen in Monza, it's still more painful when both cars retire from the midfield.

With the Engine situation at the Silver arrows and at least one penalty for each driver expected at one of remaining 7 races, i think the title fight is still far from closed.

It is strange that Ferrari struggled with their setup in their Home Grandprix. At least the star sports commentators did not realize of this till the end of the race when Vettel subtly passed on the message in the in lap at the end. Remarkable how he maintained his podium position.

With at least two of the remaining races not being favourable to the LWB Mercedes, we can hope to see a close title fight.

I know some of you have responded to me questions in this forum. But it never ceases to surprise me (and frustrate me) with such a good and enviable position for Ocon (and even Perez to a certain degree) but they were unable to convert that. Is it driver skill? Experience? Car performance? Strategy? or just luck?

Overall, a really boring race. Was hoping for a wet and then on to drying track or vice versa to spice things up - but it turned out to be clear, unlike FP and Quali.
Only three points separating the top two drivers is very interesting.

SFI at 113 points, 55 points clear of Williams is a comforting feeling. Keep up SFI!

Qualifying in rain & variable conditions is always a bit of a lottery.
Drivers/ teams take risks and sometimes gets rewarded or sometimes not.
But on a dry race, the combined effort of driver & car performance will come into the fore.
Sometimes teams get strategy or set up wrong. But more often they are right on.
Ferrari under performed and that opened up a chance which was well taken by the young drivers on the midfield teams.

But the main reason for the inability of Ocon, Stroll or Perez to convert their qualifying position into a result is the chassis performance and the access to PU settings/ mapping available to customer teams.

Eg. : Honda was rumored to have let McLaren use the highest possible mapping on Stoffel's car (worth 25 hp approx.) through the race and the result was seen on track while he was still running. He was keeping up with the midfielders on a power dependent track to many people's surprise.
Obviously Mercedes does not allow the customer teams free use of all the highest possible mappings on the PU as it will have an effect on the life span of the PU.
Mercedes engineers are present in the paddock and supervises/ monitors the PU during the race for the customers.
Possibly a reason why the customer teams have better reliability sometimes compared to the Factory works team.

Not a particularly entertaining race and the challenge that we hoped would materialise from Ocon and Stroll did not partly due to the fact that a dry track negated the talent that got them of the first row. Hamilton and Bottas were too powerful for Williams and Force India. It was more evident when the Ferrari of Vettel was able to make a quick pass despite being short on power compared to Mercedes.

Ferrari bungled the setup and admitted as much. Quite surprised I must say as it is uncharacteristic of them to make such crucial mistakes. However I still think it is too close to call, with quite a few races to go.

Max needs to stop trying so hard and look across his pit garage at Riccardo. Typically Aussie grit, no moaning and achieves stupendous results given the equipment he has. Verstappen's front wheel puncture was a classic example of this. Kind of send the message that he needs to be wary of other people giving him the squeeze too.

I would go with car performance. There is just too much a gulf between the front runners and the mid level teams in the dry. Rain is a great leveler, to a certain extent negating the pwer advantage and highlighting the balance of the car as well as the talent of the drivers. One good thing though is that Stroll and Ocon opened the eyes of the F1 fraternity that Verstappen is not the only young talent on the current grid.

Drive on,
Shibu.

Ferrari had a new front suspension for Monza. But didn't get the setup right due to the heavy rain on Saturday. So unlike Spa, Ferrari was totally outclassed by Mercedes in the race. Even though Lewis won at Spa, he just about managed to keep Vettel in P2. But over here, the gulf in speed was huge on race day.

For any chance in the title race, Ferrari has to get a 1 - 2 in Singapore. Else, it is going to be very hard. We were having a very close season till now. It was only first time that a driver has won back to back races. But Lewis is operating at a different level now. So, Ferrari needs to get Singapore absolutely right.

And that brings us to Ricciardo. His race craft is second to none and he been getting some stellar results with that mediocre RBR this season. And Renault will be getting a new engine at Singapore. There is a good chance for RBR to be very competitive for the rest of the season. That's something Vettel will be very vary about.

Coming back to Italy, Ocon did well. And that is someone Bottas will be vary about for that second seat at Mercedes. :)

My old theory that at the top your qualifying order counts for more than the rest, in the ultimate rank. In other words the performance of various top runners is so close that overtaking is becoming almost impossible.

Not going to write much about the race. Hamilton really showed who the big boss is.

Interesting to see a Huracan Performante at the back of the starting grid. They seemed to have gotten rid of the old Ferrari that used to be always stopped behind the Medical car.

Maybe a first for Lamborghini?!

Was wondering about that myself. That too in the heart of Ferrari country!
Last seen in 1983 I think.
This pic of the Countach is from Monaco

Source : FIA/Jalopnik

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/p...r-2021-949446/ look who came visiting to the Monza GP.

Drive on,
Shibu.

It was boring race!!!! The result was quite predictable. Having said that It is too early to write off Ferrari-Vettel this soon. They were right there with Mercedes in the SPA as SPA is mix of long straights and a tight middle section with slow, medium and high speed corners. Coming to Monza, yes Mercedes was in ominous form but Monza is about outright engine performance with more than 80% of the lap on full throttle.

The real test will be at Singapore if Mercedes is able to beat Ferrari there then it is a real concern. As shown in Montecarlo and Hungary, Ferrari is extremely strong slow speed tracks.