Autobayng News Team
Max Verstappen scored his third victory of 2025 with a dominant performance from pole position at Monza.
The Red Bull driver lost his lead to Lando Norris twice during the race but regained it each time to claim his first grand prix win in four months.
Norris followed him home in second place as McLaren tried an alternative strategy as they strived to take the lead. While Verstappen ran a fairly conventional one-stop strategy, albeit with a shortened final stint on hards, McLaren waited until late in the race before switching to softs.
However the team inadvertently triggered a change in positions between their drivers by summoning Oscar Piastri in first. The team reassured Norris they would not allow Piastri to ‘undercut’ him.
They reckoned without a slow pit stop for Norris, however. He rejoined the track behind his team mate whom McLaren swiftly instructed to yield second place. He did, albeit reluctantly, and followed Norris home in third place.
Norris had taken the lead earlier in the race when he got down the inside of Verstappen at the start. Verstappen repeated his Jeddah tactics of cutting the first corner to regain the lead, but this time he relinquished the position to his rival. It proved the right thing to do as Verstappen easily re-passed Norris for the lead.
It took Piastri a few more laps to find a way past Charles Leclerc, after the pair traded places on the first two laps, but after that Ferrari never figured in the fight at the front. Leclerc came in fourth while Lewis Hamilton recovered from 10th on the grid to take sixth behind former team mate George Russell.
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Alexander Albon crossed the line seventh ahead of Andrea Kimi Antonelli, but the second Mercedes driver was given a five-second time penalty for driving erratically which dropped him to ninth.
Gabriel Bortoleto benefited from that post-race change to inherit eighth place. He lost one position during the race to Fernando Alonso but regained it when the Aston Martin driver retired with a suspension failure.
That left Isack Hadjar to claim the final point having started in the pit lane. Carlos Sainz came 11th after being knocked into a spin by Oliver Bearman at the Roggia chicane. The Haas driver earned a penalty, as did his team mate Esteban Ocon, who crowded Lance Stroll off the road on the approach to the same corner.
This article will be updated.
2025 Italian Grand Prix
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