F1 - Italian GP

The temple of speed at Monza delivered the fastest ever lap and quickest ever race in F1 history this weekend. Let's see how everyone performed...

Performances

Red Bull - a classic Verstappen performance. An amazing pole lap and fantastic controlled drive to get the win. The car looked really good this weekend and not even the McLarens could really get close. He's probably now confirmed as the Red Bull goat - broke Vettel's pole record with the team with that great lap. Could he potentially get a few more wins at tracks like Mexico and Vegas? Yuki had a decent qualifying but couldn't convert it into points.

McLaren - this was a joke imo. What were those team orders??? And it's a championship fight!!! There's no being fair in those!! It just takes the sting out of the championship fight. I mean where do your draw the line? Are they going to do this every time someone has a slow pit stop??? It's a part of racing - there's a reason F1 is a team sport! But in terms of pace Lando was much faster than Oscar all weekend long. But a pit mistake happens! I don't get why they asked them to swap. Honestly this just annoys me. Also that championship mentality - we've seen examples of both Max and Lewis ignoring team orders in championship fights before. (Lewis and Nico about 1000 times lol). Oscar is a better team player than I certainly would be! And while it was only a 3 point loss, that could be the difference at the end of the season!

Ferrari - first of all can we appreciate that special livery? Beautiful. They should make that permanent. But in terms of pace it was alright. Charles managed to get a decent result in 4th and Lewis made up a few places to get 6th. Pretty average weekend but good enough points to maintain that P2 in the WCC. That has to be the aim for the rest of the year.

Mercedes - Russell had a pretty quiet weekend to get P5. Kimi had a decent quali but fell back in the race and ended up finishing behind Albon and Bortoleto... he really needs to step up imo. I get that the car isn't really up to scratch and he probably has the seat confirmed for 2026 but it's important for rookies to have good momentum and results in their first season to set them up nicely for the future. And Mercedes won't have 3+ season of patience imo.

Aston Martin - really bad luck again for Fernando who was having a really good race running in the points after a good qualifying. He has had the worst luck this year! Stroll had no pace as per usual.

Williams - I really thought Carlos would have a great race! He managed to outqualify Albon but didn't have the same pace in the race and was probably majority at fault for the incident with Bearman. He's P18 in the WDC, I didn't realize it was that bad! Albon had another solid race (I feel like he always comes P7 lol). He's actually ahead of Antonelli in the WDC too! One of the standout performers this year.

Sauber - pretty good qualifying and race performance from Bortoleto to score points. He's really shown his ability in the second half of the year. Hulkenberg didn't even start the race with an hydraulics issue.

Racing Bulls - Hadjar with a nice little drive to score a point in P10 from the pitlane after a tough quali. Lawson didn't really do much.

Haas - honestly how did Bearman get a penalty for that incident with Sainz! Very similar to the penalty Carlos got in Zandvoort - very unfair imo. And apparently he's only 2 penalty points away from missing a race now... I guess there's a reason he replaced K-Mag at Haas! But his pace was decent. Ocon probably deserved the penalty for the Stroll incident - didn't leave enough room.

Alpine - Idk if I'm gaslighting myself or not but it feels like Franco is getting closer to Gasly in the last few races. This car is still a complete dog though.

Race rating - 5/10 - apart from the first few laps not much happened. And this is all Pirelli's fault! Why the hell are the medium tires lasting 40 something laps??? And why were the hard tires doing similar laptimes to the softs at the end??? There needs to be a way bigger laptime and durability difference between the compounds imo. Why can't we have a compound gap or something  - make it C1, C3, C5 or whatever.

Team radio of the race - Max laughing at the McLarens for swapping the drivers 😂

Driver of the race - not too many drivers had great drives. Albon and Bortoleto were decent, but Max Verstappen is really the only option here. Fantastic pole position (fastest lap in F1 history!) and a great dominant race (fastest ever race in F1 history!) to take a superb win.

Next weekend - the Azerbaijan Grand Prix around the chaotic Baku City Circuit. A very distinct street circuit, with one half being ultra long straights where you can reach over 300 km/h, and also a half containing the fearsome tight and twisty castle section, where drivers can be caught out and it's very easy to put it in the wall! It's been on the calendar since 2016 and some of the best races have been: 2017 (extremely chaotic race where Ricciardo won, Vettel and Hamilton collided during the safety car and Stroll became the second youngest podium scorer), 2018 (the two Red Bulls colliding), 2021 (Verstappen tire failure, Hamilton losing it under breaking and Perez winning with Gasly and Vettel scoring podiums)