Ferrari’s Home Nightmare - 2026 Italian GP Winners & Losers

I am absolutely disgusted. Sebastian Vettel was able to complete more laps of Monza in a museum piece than Charles Leclerc was able to do in the actual race. It means we're going to be starting with Ferrari, I mean, come on. Because they started from the second row, which wasn't terrible considering that Ferrari's been lacking on engine power this year, but after two laps, their entire weekend came to a screeching halt with only eight points to their name and Hamilton asking for rules of engagement between them. And to make things even worse, Leclerc repeated what I think he did six years ago and crashed out around the Parabolica, and it was a gnarly crash too. Six DGs reportedly, which could maybe rule him out of contention of competing at the next Grand Prix, so we could either see Italian Jesus returning to the cockpit or Berman gets the call-up. Everyone's no longer talking about Ferrari bringing themselves into contention for either constructors' or drivers' titles and are now just going, uh-oh, the civil war has now officially begun. And even though Leclerc did go on to report that he had some throttle trouble, which did lead to the accident after he was contesting for position with Piastri, that all got completely lost within the noise of the fact that, well, he crashed, and then Kehaan-Lewis tangled, and then even the Monagasque went on to admit that, yeah, they took things a little bit too far. Instead of potential glory, or at least solid damage limitation with this brand new engine, Versailles is now having to fend off the idea that there is a civil war going on between those two drivers. And yes, the Frenchman openly saying that this kind of stuff is not good for the team. No kidding! Guess how many points Mercedes scored over them this weekend? 35, I'm going to save you the trouble, which now means that Lewis Hamilton is 76 points behind Kimi Antonelli in the championship, and it's gotten to the point now where Lewis is basically thinking, it's too late to even do team orders and prioritise me anyway. So Versailles now has a problem that better lap times alone will not solve this issue. His drivers need to agree on what's acceptable and what isn't when they meet on track. But what really frustrates me is that we saw in China that when they are fighting each other for position, Charles and Lewis can fight each other cleanly. But I suppose that Zandvoort, when we saw them butting heads a little bit, that was a bit of an omen. But now we move on to Russell. I mean, can I just start off by saying that the boos as he head toward the podium were uncalled for? I mean, come on. Because I can report that the Dutch fans, when he was getting the sprint pole and the win, they were at As George said himself, he gets that this is Kimi's home turf, so he's not going to get a warm reception. But I mean, that was, that was uncalled for. The fact of the matter is, is that Russell started 17 positions ahead of Antonelli, and he still lost. And yes, Russell was not on the optimal strategy, making his hard tyres last a cool 50 laps. I mean, that is really good going in terms of preserving his tyres, credit where it's due there. But I think part of the frustration is that Mercedes kept saying throughout the entire weekend, as far as they were concerned, and even Pirelli said that the one-stop strategy was the best strategy. And George, throughout the years, has been known to actually sense what the tyre is doing on the track and actually go against regulations or the edict from the team. Yet this time around, he agreed that, yes, the one-stop strategy was the best one. Something's really off here, especially with George now changing his focus for 2026 into targeting individual victories, as in little by little, instead of thinking about potentially for the World Championship. I mean, that is telling me very clearly that something's going on within closed doors and that he is maybe impending for a bit of a valvorectomy. I mean, this is not the same George that we were hearing back in March now, is it? So yeah, I think Monza left George with very little reason to believe that he can even catch Kimi, because now Kimi is equal in terms of the number of race wins that George has, and George has had many years in which to accrue those seven victories, whereas Kimi has been able to do it within the space of six months. And I'm just going to get the foam of doubt out for this. I would get the spanner out, but I'm starting to think that George might be thinking if he goes against Team Edict, he could find himself on the scrap heap, or he could find himself with no chance of contesting for his own World Championship. And then we've got Aston Martin, because this team did help decide who went on to win around Monza for the fact that one of their cars conked out. Not exactly the most glamorous ways of dictating the event of a race, as many folks from 2021 would attest to, because the hydraulic failure from Stroll triggered that virtual safety car that Antonelli and Verstappen used to reinvigorate their races. And Alonso had already retired after damaging his car over a kerb, having already partaken in a power unit change, but they were already short in competitive encouragement anyway. And although Aston's not far off getting to the 2026 minimum weight, their aerobot Enrico Cardile is now saying that the MR26 is pretty much done when it comes to aero updates, and that only minimal stuff will be taking place in the next three months. A delight for the likes of the Williams crew, who thought that ninth place in the constructors was really at risk. And oh yeah, the team is now starting to needle Honda again, saying that, oh the chassis is great, it's just a shame the engine power is not working. It just makes me think that all those rumours of them going back to Daddy Toto for 2028 in terms of engines is not all that far-fetched. And then we've got Oliver Vermeulen's illusion. I mean, that was a damn squid now, wasn't it? Because he got the updated engine, the same one that the official Ferrari drivers got. Ocon having the original engine from the start of the year, but both drivers having the same aerodynamic upgrade. And yes, Saturday was a pretty decent showing of P12 in comparison to Ocon's own result, but ultimately, he only finished one place ahead of Ocon in the actual race classification. Although, there's a saving grace here, he did at least survive being on the lead lap. Despite the upgrade, has a hat classic on his hand. Excessive tyre wear. And then, they missed the virtual safety car stop. That put Pei to any chance of a cheeky point, because at one point, Oliver did look like he was in contention. But yeah, this weekend exposed the limit of adding engine performance to a car that just can't look after its tyres. And we were all thinking, especially, I think, the hashtag, that this upgraded engine and this upgraded aero package would at least try and get them somewhere back to where they were at the start of the year. But I think, collectively, the rest of the midfield brigade can breathe a huge sigh of relief. And I think Cadillac can breathe a sigh of relief, because hey, you're great, they got both cars to the end, uh, only it wasn't a clean one. Last and second to last, they also had a slow stop, and oh yeah, also, Checo picked up another penalty. And yes, in terms of laps down, Valtteri was two laps down, and Checo only won, but still, nowhere close to scoring points, or even just being on the lead lap. I think being on the lead lap would do. But to be fair, Valtteri did say he felt somewhat competitive toward the Williams before his stop, which was the slow one. Meanwhile, Checo was talking about the straight line deficit, and I remember seeing those graphs after FP2. The straight line speed loss of that Cadillac is absolutely shocking. And then to top it all off, Checo got dinged for leaving the track and not rejoining it properly through the escape road. Fun. Then he had a separate Piteccia infringement, but he only got a slap on the wrist for that, so, you know, thank his chickens for all of that. But one thing to point out is that despite initial reports that Cadillac were taking the new Ferrari engine, turns out they decided not to bring it for this race, which does give them some leeway here for where they were, and they were slightly more competitive than the Astons, but it's clear there's still work to do with this team. And speaking of Williams-es-es-es, Alex is here because, well, the team kept him out to avoid losing time in the pits, him staying on the hard tyres fitted during the red flag, when you could change tyres freely. Unlike his teammate who did stop under the virtual safety car, Albon's front tyres just simply gave way, and he ultimately had to stop anyway to go onto the soft tyres, so it was all for naught, quite frankly. And yes, he did elect to take on a brand new engine, which did give him a little bit more pace, but that poor strategy call just was completely the wrong thing to do. In short, it was a tactical decision which ultimately fell flat on its face. And it just leaves Williams with yet another question lay on their hands regarding their car, because how can they make such a strategic gamble if they know, or come to realise, that their tyre-deg situation is just that bad? Probably not much better than the situation over at Haas. You can't pull off these long runs like they did a few years ago. I still remember back in 2022, Albon somehow dragging that FW44 up to the dizzying heights of ninth. So yeah, I'm also thinking that maybe their choice of front suspension for this year, going for a slightly different decision in terms of design, that might not have been the best idea. I think they'll revert next year. And now we move on to the mess section with the likes of McLaren, and yes, they did give us a very spicy last-minute battle between Norris and Piastri, and they did manage to get some progress in terms of their battle with Ferrari for P2 in the Constructors. But when it comes to the battle or hopes for first place in the Constructors, yeah, Mercedes left them for dust, and Norris, well, I mean, it sort of puts pay to his momentum after Hungary and Zandvoort. They were the living embodiment of meh, because they didn't even get a podium, and yeah, Lando did recover from 8th and did pass Piastri, who had started 6th after an impeding penalty with Lawson, and earlier fought for a podium. But they both stayed out under the virtual safety car, which, again, might not have been the right thing to do, and why neither McLaren got on the dais. And would you look at that? They were free to race, their closing scrap including Norris touching the grass, even if for effect at the very same corner where we saw things heat up between them a couple of years back. All with of course Stella jumping up and down and saying, look how free our drivers are allowed to race each other. No, sorry mate, people don't care about the prior rules anymore, because, well, you're not leading the Constructors fight, you're not contending for the World Championship, or at least Lando was briefly, but not anymore, so it would seem. What could have been a pretty solid race, considering that Oscar did qualify 3rd before his penalty, turned out to just be okay. Lando and Oscar had every reason to be battling for 4th place, but the fact remains though is that Antonelli has managed to make a huge leap forward in terms of the championship, and, yeah, that upgraded rear wing that McLaren bought to this race, it turned out to really not give them that transformative lift, quite honestly, downforce. Now we move on to Lawson, because he really needed this weekend to be yet another shot in the arm on terms of his prospects of maybe surviving into F1 through 2028 and beyond. Put simply, it needed to make his contributions very, very obvious, but instead, we still did not get that clean weekend, and also, it was not helped by the fact that he had to take an engine penalty, and then setup changes meant that he had to start from the pit lane. So you could easily say that this weekend had plenty of but-to-be-fairs with Liam, and, to be fair, he will be probably getting at least one more go around the Mazdrane, because even Law of Mechies, a team principal, is believing that Isaac may not have enough fuel left in the tank in terms of recovery of his injuries to make it to the Spanish Grand Prix. And then another to-be-fair is that once Liam did get going, and he got those setup changes in his tank and fresh engine, he was battling with Hülkenberg for points, and he did at least maybe have a semblance of an element of hope of getting into P10. But then front wing damage halted that, and he wound up 14th, and he got a black and white warning flag for his trouble, albeit with no penalty. And Verstappen's podium made the contrast pretty stark, but Liam had started from the back and recovered somewhat. He got useful pace, but, yeah, it wasn't clean. No, not at all. But he'll get one more go at least. And then there's Audi. They went into Monza using their rarely-talked-about gear ratio joke. In changing it, you can do that once a year. But it meant that their start suffered again. They spent Sunday recovering, and they ultimately finished 11th and 12th just outside the points. Their race director finished praising the recovery and pit work that they did, Hülkenberg's 2.44 second stop, meaning that Audi, once again, had the fastest stop of the race. But that still does not escape the fact that their starts are woefully bad with their choice of a Mahoussic turbo. They could have easily solved it with another ADUO patch that they are eligible for, to have a slightly smaller turbo, but they're not doing that. They're clearly focusing on next year. They might get themselves slightly into the winner's bracket if their appeal goes through, because, yes, they are lodging an appeal. Team has decided to appeal the decision regarding Yuki Tsunoda at the start of the formation lap. Even though the stewards found Tsunoda correctly positioned and said his team hadn't been told he was considered responsible for the restart delay, but I still think that maybe then fixing their starts would solve their recovery pace. But, hey, this year, if they can finish anywhere higher than 9th in the constructors, that's not too shabby. If they can get P7 from Haas, that would be amazing, in my opinion. Meanwhile, there's Carlos Sainz. He was able to He briefly got to 11th place, but then fell down to 16th around the restart, and unlike his teammate Albon, he did elect to go on to mediums through the virtual safety car. Their end of race pace was pretty hopeful, and it did give the team something to cheer about, but it was just too little too late. There was maybe a hope of maybe getting a cheeky point. At least Carlos was in contention, but, again, Williams are just not ready for prime time right now. This car, reportedly, according to news we heard earlier in the week, is only just now getting into 2026 territory in terms of spec. The launch car we had this year was akin to stuff they were talking about in 2025, but I think the thing we can probably learn from Carlos is that in terms of start line procedures, like Audi, Williams needs to really get on it, because this team, who are very unlikely to score points, if they find themselves in a, you know, reasonable qualifying position, they need to be electric when it comes to starts. I mean, take Carl Pinto. He's mighty on the race starts. He can go from 14th to 10th, and even though he was nowhere near points-paying positions in one go, he can find himself in those positions, like we saw around Zandvoort. Williams need the same thing if they want to have any hope of getting a P10, or maybe, gosh forbid, a P9. And then we've got Ocon. I ask you lot this. How can you judge an upgrade when, for starters, the driver doesn't have the optimal engine, and also reports that the aerodynamic load on their car is simply not up to snuff? I mean, how can you judge Esteban this weekend? Which is why I'm going for neutral ground. What gives him some credit is that even though he qualified four places behind Berman, he did manage to get himself into the points fight before the red flag, but then lost ground at the restart, and not even a But yes, he had the older package, and it does make me think that Haas really needs to establish why the upgrade behaved so inconsistently between the drivers before it can confidently judge its drivers for next year, or even its own progress. So yeah, I think correlation efforts as well as an old throwback enemy is just not good at all. Esteban did what he could. And then we have the winners, of course, because with Antonelli, this was not supposed to happen. Starting 19th was supposed to give Antonelli's rivals an opportunity. We talked about it earlier last week, but with Kimi, he'd already, by the time he got to the red flag, got to P12. After the restart, he got into the top 10 almost instantaneously, and then he elected to stop underneath the virtual safety car, put on those mediums, and that got him even closer to Russell, and then overtaking his teammate twice throughout the Grand Prix. And not even him having an excursion onto the gravel could stop his momentum. And with Kimi, he was so calm after that, just saying, oh well, yeah, that was just down to the track surface deteriorating and all that stuff. No, he didn't seem at least a little bit rattled. It sort of reminds me of what happened with Hamilton back in 2007 in China, when he took an excursion onto the gravel going into the pit was the reason why he didn't win that year's championship. This time around, Kimi? Water of a duck's back. And yes, we all know that Mercedes had the best package of the weekend. Not even Ferrari's ADO upgrade could hold a really big candle toward it. But it seemed like there were setback after little setback for Antonelli, and he just breezed right through them. And Russell? There was just nothing he could do. And it really should give some members of the Tifosi a little bit of foam for thought, because yes, I know that the Tifosi are there for Ferrari, and Ferrari got the biggest cheers of the weekend despite the fact that, well, there's a competitive Italian at play here. But this kid has now won the Italian Grand Prix, the first time an Italian has won this in 60 years, and he is now 66 points ahead in the championship. And it's his seventh victory of the year, and Norris was able to win last year's championship with seven victories. And based on what we heard from Russell, it doesn't really seem likely he's going to be fighting back unless reliability comes back into play again. Which, this being the W17, that could happen, but then Russell's already conceded that he too will probably take a grid penalty, and then Antonelli is probably going to take another grid penalty. I mean, it's still up in the air regarding that. Reliability might still be the undoing of Antonelli, but in terms of pace, oh no. Confidence? Oh, he's got this in the bag. But yeah, from an Italian Grand Prix, yes, it did show that there were some really concerning signs regarding the regulations, but from Antonelli, going from 19th to 1st, something that not even Verstappen has done. Wow. Fantastic. Generational stuff. And Verstappen provided his own solid results as well, because he openly admitted that with his own benchmark engine, he couldn't rely on the straights to help him out, so he had to do something that he, thankfully, probably will actually be quite happy about. He had to rely on braking into very big, heavy braking zones helping him out, and that's where he and the RB22 excelled. And it meant that Max was in contention for a while, and he was even leading the race for a brief period until the superior race pace of the W17 took over. But we still saw Max Verstappen hovering in the background just in case those two collided, although that excursion from Kimi, it came close. Then he stopped the hard tyres, did Max, and that got him past both of the McLarens. His explanation gave those overtakes a very useful detail. That weak deployment hurt him on the straights, but indeed he could brake and attack around the outside. Yeah, loose track material disrupted his recovery, but he still got P3, an unlikely podium from a package that required Max to work around it. Yeah, he's not happy with the rear over bumps and kerbs and whatnot, but he has at least some confidence with this car to at least maybe attack here or there. But I think he still would like to see the back of this car around, though, that's for sure. And then there's Alpine. I'll give this team credit. Normally, pole to seventh would sound like a complete collapse, but they were able to claw some points back in their battle for fifth after the international courts took Pierre's Monaco podium away from the second time, and Flavio Briatore completely went off on one. And it was really nice to see that Pierre was able to at least keep his lead for one lap, and that pole lap, that's still an absolutely fantastic result for him, especially this is the place where he won his only Grand Prix with Alfa Tauri six years ago, and now he's managed to complete the set with a pole position. Yes, he did fall down to seventh place once the better packages came through, but it's still something that meant that he was, Pierre, best of the rest. But I think it's quite safe to say that Pierre's Saturday manifesting Toto Wolff punching his monitor in frustration, yeah, that was a very good day for everyone. And also now a juicy reaction sticker to be kept for posterity. Meanwhile, there was Colopinto. He managed to qualify in the top ten as well, and during all of the kerfuffle after Leclerc's crash, found himself in fourth position. At the restart, he was battling Max for third. He was going toe to toe with the four-time world champion, holding his own, as well as fending off the McLarens. That is some very, very big stuff for the Argentine, who never thought in his wildest dreams two years ago he'd be contesting with these juggernauts of the sport. But yes, yes, I know, he did go wide, and that did stuff the thing. He suspected floor damage was at play, and he did recover to ninth, so he did salvage points for his own mistake. And of course, one of these, so let's not forget that. You can get Colopinto coasters now on my shop, so link below. I think his performance, and his own disappointment in his own performance, I think endeared him to many other people. He was really hard on himself. I think what he was able to do at the restart, it showed that he was willing to give it a go. And I think Flavio will appreciate that, especially since he still managed to score points, and help Alpine regain ground between themselves and Racing Bulls, even without putting together a clean race for both cars, so not too shabby for this team. And then to cap things off, Racing Bulls. Yeah, Alpine took pole in the headlines, but this team made sure their championship advantage didn't take too much damage. Lindblad managed to secure P8, whilst Yuki Tsunoda bagged a single P10 for his own efforts, and considering that he's a super sub, and this is only the second Grand Prix with these new regulations, that is a very solid showing for the Japanese driver, and it meant that this team are still looking at their place in 5th place, and with that appeal being rescinded, of course Gasly forming from 3rd to 7th, ironically, jubilant news, even though Pierre is a long-time favourite of the Firenze team. And let's not forget that Yuki spent most of qualifying helping out Lindblad in giving him a tow, so there's that as well. However, that point might not last. Well, you see, his approach to the restart grid prompted an extra formation lap, and Audi notified its intention to appeal. For now though, Racing Bulls have scored 5 points, and they do have a good advantage. A very solid effort for the British rookie. And I think you getting to the end of this video is also a very solid effort, and now I encourage you to check out this video over here, which is very much worth your time. I'll just go and freshen myself up, and I'll be right with you.