Hamilton & Ricciardo shine at glorious Monza

Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix offered us yet another fascinating series of insights into the battles on and off the track in the ever-fascinating tussle between drivers, teams, movers and shakers who help turn the wheels of Formula One.

We saw an inch perfect performance from Lewis Hamilton, who overcame a faulty race start (RS) mode on his Mercedes to recover lost places, move onto the tail of Nico Rosberg and pressure the World Championship leader into a costly error. Twice in the race Rosberg missed his turn-in point at Turn 1, and twice he was forced to wind his way through the run-off area chicane designed to penalise such mistakes. On the first occasion he lost 2 seconds yet retained the lead, but on the second he handed the advantage to Hamilton and the race was lost.

Coming two weeks after their much publicised collision in the Belgian Grand Prix, some cynics suggested Rosberg’s error was in fact a fix orchestrated by the team in order to compensate Hamilton for the incident in Spa. Frankly such talk is nonsense, unless the Mercedes management are to be charged with bringing their company and the sport into disrepute. On top of that I cannot see Nico Rosberg ever agreeing to such a thing. The scandal which engulfed the sport after ‘Crashgate’ in Singapore in 2008 should put paid to such thoughts; it was madness for Renault then, and it would be terminal for Mercedes now.

Despite his victory, Hamilton continues to languish 22 points behind Rosberg in their duel for the championship, but that’s nothing in reality. The British ace only needs one victory with Rosberg suffering a car failure, a much more likely scenario than many think possible. Add to that the bizarre double-points available in the final round in Abu Dhabi and Hamilton could still go into that race 49 points behind Rosberg and win the title if the German failed to finish the race. Everything is still to play for in this year’s World Championship.

Hamilton’s achievement in Monza was mirrored only by the form of Australian Daniel Ricciardo who once again made his team mate Sebastian Vettel look like damaged goods. It is said that Vettel has simply struggled with the change in regulations this year, but it just seems that Ricciardo is the better driver at the moment. His overtaking manoeuvres were typically instinctive and decisive.

And then of course we had the sight of Fernando Alonso retiring his Ferrari with mechanical failure for the first time in 86 Grands Prix, with neither him nor his team mate Kimi Raikkonen in contention at the Italian team’s home race. Add to that the verbal spat between Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo and FIAT Group CEO Sergio Marchionne, plus comments by the F1 team’s boss Marco Mattiacci about whether anyone is indispensable, and you come away with the feeling that Ferrari has problems from top to bottom. It may be some time before the Tifosi in Monza have a home victory to celebrate.