It looks like I forgot to post a review of last week's Dutch Grand Prix - you can see the highlights here.
This weekend was Ferrari's home race at Monza, Italy. Sadly, it was another race weekend spoiled by regulations and procedures. Nearly half the field had grid penalties for using excessive engine parts, but it took around four hours after qualifying before they decided the starting grid for yesterday's race.
Home favorite Charles LeClerc started on pole, but championship leader Max Verstappen made it up from seventh to third by the end of the second lap. While Mercedes driver George Russell fought for a top-three place, his team mate Lewis Hamilton had to make his way slowly forward from 19th.
The end of the race was the big letdown. Daniel Ricciardo had to pull his McLaren over with a few laps remaining. The stewards were slow to call a safety car and then only some of the back markers unlapped themselves, so the race finished behind the safety car with the two championship contenders at the front on the soft (fastest) tires. Even though Max Verstappen won his fifth race in a row, his team boss Christian Horner admitted that fans had been deprived of a last lap battle. Unlike NASCAR, F1 cars start with a set amount of fuel, so green–white–checker finishes might not be an option, but something needs to be done.
Dutch driver Nyck de Vries won driver of the day. He drove a test session for Aston Martin in Friday's free practice 1 (FP1), and then got called up to drive for Williams when Alex Albon was diagnosed with appendicitis on Saturday morning (Alex is doing fine now after he suffered "post-operative anesthetic complications"). I think the commentators said that he's the first person to drive for two different teams in the same race weekend since the late-70s. He qualified in a respectable 13th place, but started in 8th after the grid penalties were applied to others. Nyck finished 9th to score two points on his F1 debut.
Although the race was in Italy, many teams are British-based and several had tributes to the Queen on their cars. There was also a minute's silence before the race.
You can see Monza highlights here.
The next race isn't until the Singapore GP on September 30th, where Max Verstappen could theoretically win the championship with six races still to go.