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Charles Leclerc scored a brilliantly opportunistic victory for Ferrari in the 2024 Italian Grand Prix, defeating Oscar Piastri’s McLaren thanks to a strategic masterstroke at Monza.
As McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull all committed their drivers to a two-stop race following a frenetic pace in the opening stint, Ferrari gambled on making it to the end with just one pitstop.
And that gamble paid off handsomely thanks most likely to a combination of the Ferrari’s excellent inherent tyre management capabilities and another superbly executed drive by Leclerc.
Once McLaren realised the Ferraris weren’t going to make a second stop, the team told Piastri to crack on and chase them down.
Leclerc held a lead of 11.5 seconds over Piastri with just eight laps to run, after Piastri overtook the rear-gunning Ferrari of Carlos Sainz into the Ascari chicane.
Sainz was at this stage struggling with his front-left tyre, despite pitting four laps later than Leclerc did, but Leclerc’s pace held up better - and although Piastri was charging along in the closing laps, Leclerc held on to win by 2.6 seconds.
Lando Norris converted pole position into third place, losing out to a surprise pass from Piastri into the second chicane on the first lap and then getting overtaken by Leclerc into the first Lesmo as the McLaren suffered a rear slide and lost traction in the middle of the chicane.
It still looked at this stage as though the McLarens were racing each other for the win - especially when Leclerc complained about losing track position to Norris after being called into the pits as early as lap 15 of 53 - but the race turned on its head thanks to Leclerc pulling off the Monza equivalent of the ‘George Russell Spa’ strategy.
Like Sainz, Norris struggled to prevent his front left Pirelli opening up - complaining of understeer early in the race and requiring a couple of turns of front wing to be added at his first pitstop to try to improve the car’s balance.
The 16 points he scored for third place plus fastest lap at least cut his championship deficit to Max Verstappen down from 70 to 62 - but this had to go down as a major missed opportunity for McLaren given Red Bull’s struggles at Monza.
Sainz took fourth, ahead of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes, while Verstappen salvaged sixth place on a weekend where Red Bull qualified badly and looked confused as to why the RB20 simply wasn’t working on a track that should have favoured it much better than Zandvoort did.
George Russell briefly threatened the top two at the start of the race, launching well off the grid but getting forced wide approaching Turn 1 by Piastri’s McLaren.
Russell damaged his car’s right front wing endplate and subsequently dropped to the back of the leading group of eight cars, before recovering to seventh by passing the second Red Bull of Sergio Perez into the first corner - despite Perez forcing the Mercedes onto the grass approaching the braking zone.
Alex Albon scored his first points since Williams introduced its first major upgrade of the season, narrowly beating Kevin Magnussen’s Haas in a battle of one-stopping midfield cars.
Magnussen copped a 10s penalty for colliding with Pierre Gasly’s Alpine at the second chicane, and received two penalty points on his licence that will now mean a race ban given his existing tally.
Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin went with a two-stop strategy but fell just a tenth of a second short of beating Magnussen’s Haas to the final point.
Although he started inside the top 10, Nico Hulkenberg had a horrible race to 17th - including getting forced off the track at Ascari by Daniel Ricciardo’s RB then colliding with the other RB of Yuki Tsunoda at Turn 1, which forced Tsunoda to retire and earned Hulkenberg a 10s penalty for causing a collision, as well as front wing change for the Haas.
Franco Colapinto finished 12th on his F1 debut for Williams, ahead of Ricciardo (who was penalised five seconds for that Hulkenberg incident), Esteban Ocon’s Alpine, Gasly and the Sauber of Valtteri Bottas.
