Championship leader Lewis Hamilton achieved his 40th career Formula 1 victory at Monza despite late drama which affected his team-mate Nico Rosberg in a fiery retirement.
The Mercedes driver made a clean getaway to lead away from pole, while Rosberg slipped back to sixth. As for Kimi Raikkonen, it was a dreadful start as his Ferrari made a really slow start from the front row.
Hamilton dominated the race from there, but with a few laps remaining, he was told by his team that he needed to push without being given a reason for doing so.
Hamilton did as he was told and took the chequered flag with a 25-second lead over Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
After the race Mercedes was referred to the race stewards because its tyres were measured below Pirelli’s 19.5psi guideline on the grid just before the Italian Grand Prix.
Meanwhile, there was more drama for Mercedes as Rosberg’s engine expired with a few laps to go when he was running third and catching Vettel.
It was the first mechanical retirement for Mercedes this season and comes after Rosberg had to revert to an old-spec power unit, which had done six races, after an issue with his upgraded engine.
It means Hamilton, who secured his seventh win of the season, now leads Rosberg by 53 points in the championship with seven races left.
Felipe Massa inherited third, with his Williams team-mate Valtteri Bottas fourth and Raikkonen fifth after a strong recovery drive.
Force India’s B-spec car continued to impress with Sergio Perez following up his fifth place finish at Spa with sixth at Monza, one position clear of team-mate Nico Hulkenberg.
It moved the Silverstone-based team back ahead of Lotus into fifth place in the constructors’ championship, after the Enstone-based team’s race lasted just a couple of laps.
Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado both suffered contact at Turn 1, with Grosjean pulling off track and Maldonado recovering to the pits and parking the car in the garage.
Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo recovered from starting P19 after a 25-place grid penalty for changing engine elements to finish eighth with team-mate Daniil Kvyat tenth.
Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson scored points for the third successive race with ninth.
Carlos Sainz Jr just missed out of points in P11, one position ahead of Toro Rosso team-mate Max Verstappen, who started last and had to serve a drive-through penalty as punishment for his team releasing his car without its bodywork secure in qualifying, P12.
Felipe Nasr was P13 for Sauber ahead of McLaren’s Jenson Button, who made a superb start to rise from P15 to ninth before dropping back.
The Manors of Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi brought up the rear with McLaren’s Fernando Alonso retired with three laps to go.
Italian Grand Prix, race results after 53 laps:
1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:18:00.688
2 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari +25.042s
3 Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes +47.635s
4 Valtteri Bottas Williams-Mercedes +47.996s
5 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari +68.860s
6 Sergio Perez Force India-Mercedes +72.783s
7 Nico Hulkenberg Force India-Mercedes +1 lap
8 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull-Renault +1 lap
9 Marcus Ericsson Sauber-Ferrari +1 lap
10 Daniil Kvyat Red Bull-Renault +1 lap
11 Carlos Sainz Toro Rosso-Renault +1 lap
12 Max Verstappen Toro Rosso-Renault +1 lap
13 Felipe Nasr Sauber-Ferrari +1 lap
14 Jenson Button McLaren-Honda +1 lap
15 Will Stevens Marussia-Ferrari +2 laps
16 Roberto Merhi Marussia-Ferrari +2 laps
17 Nico Rosberg Mercedes DNF
18 Fernando Alonso McLaren-Honda DNF
– Romain Grosjean Lotus-Mercedes DNF
– Pastor Maldonado Lotus-Mercedes DNF
Drivers’ standings:
1 Lewis Hamilton 252
2 Nico Rosberg 199
3 Sebastian Vettel 178
4 Felipe Massa 97
5 Kimi Raikkonen 92
6 Valtteri Bottas 91
7 Daniil Kvyat 58
8 Daniel Ricciardo 55
9 Romain Grosjean 38
10 Sergio Perez 33
11 Nico Hulkenberg 30
12 Max Verstappen 26
13 Felipe Nasr 16
14 Pastor Maldonado 12
15 Fernando Alonso 11
16 Carlos Sainz 9
17 Marcus Ericsson 9
18 Jenson Button 6
19 Roberto Merhi 0
20 Will Stevens 0
Constructors’ standings:
1 Mercedes 451
2 Ferrari 270
3 Williams-Mercedes 188
4 Red Bull-Renault 113
5 Force India-Mercedes 63
6 Lotus-Mercedes 50
7 Toro Rosso-Renault 35
8 Sauber-Ferrari 25
9 McLaren-Honda 17
10 Marussia-Ferrari 0
Race stewards are investigating Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg over tyre pressure following the Italian Grand Prix. Autosport.com has the full story.
Italian Grand Prix winner Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg have been referred to the Formula 1 stewards after their tyre pressures were found to be below Pirelli’s specifications.
FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer’s report said the top four cars on the Monza grid – the Mercedes and Ferraris – had their left-hand tyres checked on the grid after the five-minute signal.
While the Ferraris were within Pirelli’s 19.5psi tyre pressure specification and 110-degree tyre blanket temperature, both Mercedes were outside the marks.
Hamilton’s tyre was measured at 0.3psi below, Rosberg’s at 1.1psi under.
Championship leader Hamilton went on to win the race, having been urged by his Mercedes team to push as hard as possible and extend a lead over Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari in the closing laps. He eventually won by 25 seconds.
Rosberg had been running third behind Vettel until a late engine failure ended his race.
Pirelli had raised its tyre pressure specifications for the Italian GP, though it said the decision was unrelated to the tyre failures and related controversy in Belgium a fortnight earlier.
Mercedes technical chief Paddy Lowe said the team was confused by the summons.
“We don’t understand it to be honest,” he told Sky Sports.
“We’ve been summoned to the stewards, so we’ll go there and explain it.
“All I know is we set our pressures fully supervised by the Pirelli engineer.
“He was perfectly happy with them as they were set.”
Lowe confirmed that the instruction to Hamilton to push was related to the potential for a penalty.
“With an abundance of caution, we thought let’s make a gap,” he said.
Hamilton said he “wasn’t aware” of the stewards’ investigation and declined to comment.
Sebastian Vettel believes the heart would be ripped out of Formula 1 if the Italian Grand Prix was lost from the calendar “for shitty money reasons”.
Vettel was given a rapturous reception by thousands of Ferrari fans that again thronged the start-finish straight at Monza for the top-three ceremony.
After finishing second to Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton – although the reigning champion is under investigation by the stewards for potentially illegal tyre pressures – Vettel has demanded an end to the contract stalemate over the future of the race.
With F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone remaining locked in talks with circuit and race officials, Vettel said: “It’s the best second place I’ve ever had.
“If we take this [race] away from the calendar for any shitty money reasons, you are basically ripping our hearts out.
“The emotions here are incredible. You stand on the grid and people left and right are happy to be part of it.
“It makes our day. Thank you for this emotion.”
Vettel was provided with strong support from Hamilton who said: “This circuit is such a special one for me and all the drivers.
“When you stand on that podium you feel incredibly proud to be among all the greats that have stood up there.
“The sea of fans is unlike anything I’ve seen.
“It’s one of the best tracks in the world. This has to stay here for moral reasons.
“You’ve got all those fans out there who come every single year.
“Another grand prix would not have that same impact. We definitely have to keep it.”
After his third place for Williams, ex-Ferrari driver Felipe Massa said: “Here we are in the history of Formula 1. We race for the people here.
“When I see the podium here, people screaming and crying, we cannot lose that.
“This is part of our blood and we cannot lose these type of races. I really like to go to new countries, we go to amazing countries, but you cannot lose something that’s in your blood.”
Source: Autosport.com
Nico Rosberg’s hopes of taking the battle to championship-leading Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton in Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix have been heavily compromised by an engine problem that cost him in qualifying.
Rosberg is 28 points behind double Formula One world champion Hamilton and came to Monza needing to claw back points before the championship heads out of Europe to races that are among his rival’s strongest.
Instead, the German will start fourth with the Briton on pole position for the 11th time in 12 races, although with doubts also hanging over Hamilton’s engine pending investigations.
The Mercedes mechanics had to work flat out between final practice and qualifying to replace Rosberg’s engine with one that had been used in five previous races.
He avoided any penalty, because it remained within his quota for the season, but Mercedes had brought an upgraded engine to Monza for both drivers and the change meant reverting to a less powerful unit.
“We realised directly after P3 (final practice) so the mechanics did an incredible job to change everything in one and a half hours or something,” Rosberg told reporters.
“It has a lot of mileage, it’s done six races…and engines degrade over time so it definitely has compromised my weekend and will compromise my race as well.
“You can see that I lost a lot of time on the straights,” added the German who hoped to be able to race the two Ferraris ahead of him but was less sure about catching Hamilton.
Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff said, however, that the team had yet to discover the cause of the problem and Hamilton’s engine could not be given a clear bill of health yet.
“It was clear today that even if we would have found out what the problem was, we couldn’t change two engines so we did it on Nico’s car,” he said.
“If we find out that it is a major issue and this is something that would put Lewis’s engine or race at risk, this would be certainly something that we would consider,” he said of the possibility of Hamilton’s engine also being swapped out.
“Our car has great pace and it’s better to play it safe.”
Wolff said Rosberg had struggled with understeer which could also be linked to the engine change.
“I would say the combination of an old engine and a car that wasn’t properly set up to these conditions made him end up in P4.”
Source: Reuters
UPDATE: No further action over Mercedes tyre pressure investigation
Formula One racing’s governing body the FIA have confirmed that no further action will be taken with regards to Mercedes’ potentially breaching the minimum starting tyre pressures at Monza.
As a result, Lewis Hamilton is set remain victor of the Formula 1 Gran Premio d’Italia 2015.
The concern centred around guidelines issues by Pirelli stating that teams must start the race with tyre pressures of 19.5psi or above. When both Mercedes were checked, Hamilton’s left-rear tyre was found to be 0.3psi below the required mark, with the same tyre on Nico Rosberg’s car 1.1 psi under.
Even as the national anthems played on the podium, the result was therefore suddenly thrown into doubt, with Mercedes summoned to see the stewards.
Having heard the case, the FIA confirmed that no further action will be taken.
“Having heard from the Technical Delegate, the Team Representatives and the Pirelli Team Tyre engineer, the Stewards have determined that the pressure in the tyres concerned were at the minimum start pressure recommended by Pirelli when they were fitted to the car,” the full statement from the FIA read.
“In making this determination regarding the pressures, the Stewards noted that the tyre warming blankets had been disconnected from their power source, as is normal procedure, and the tyres were significantly below the maximum permitted tyre blanket temperature at the time of the FIA’s measurement on the grid, and at significantly different temperatures from other cars measured on the grid.
“Further, the Stewards are satisfied that the team followed the currently specified procedure, supervised by the Tyre Manufacturer, for the safe operation of the tyres. Therefore the Stewards decide to take no further action.
“Nevertheless, the Stewards recommend that the Tyre Manufacturer and the FIA hold further meetings to provide clear guidance to the teams on measurement protocols.”
Source: Formula1.com