F1 Italian GP Live Commentary and Updates - Race
We bring you all the action from the 16th round of the 2024 Formula 1 season at Monza
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri locked out the front row for the Italian Grand Prix in a tight qualifying session at Monza.
The McLaren duo came out on top in what was the closest top-six in Formula 1 qualifying history as George Russell took third for Mercedes.
But with Max Verstappen the lead Red Bull down in only seventh and Ferrari back on form in the hunt for a home win, what will happen?
The Italian GP gets under way at 2pm BST.
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Good afternoon everybody, and welcome to Autosport's live text coverage of the Italian Grand Prix. Wherever in the world you're joining us from, thank you we hope you enjoy the next few hours or so in our company as we bring you all the updates as they happen from Monza.
We're a little under 50 minutes away from the start of what promises to be a fascinating race, after gaps in qualifying between the leading four manufacturers were based on fractions of a second. Between first and sixth was just 0.186s!
The last time we had a McLaren 1-2 at Monza, the year was 2012 and Lewis Hamilton had yet to sign for Mercedes. Jenson Button joined the polesitter on the front row, while Fernando Alonso lined up tenth for Ferrari, Sergio Perez 12th for Sauber and Daniel Ricciardo was 14th for Toro Rosso. Nico Hulkenberg lined up at the back of what was then a 24-car grid for Force India.
McLaren has of course won at Monza in the intervening years, most recently in 2021 when Ricciardo triumphed over Lando Norris against the form book. That year the race turned on its head when Hamilton and Max Verstappen clashed while battling for the lead, but this time around McLaren is at the front on merit after Norris outqualified Oscar Piastri yesterday. Here's the full qualifying report, if you're still getting up to speed.
Norris took victory last week at the Dutch Grand Prix, and could very well do more damage to Verstappen's championship lead if he is able to hold station ahead of team-mate Piastri this afternoon. The Briton notably post-qualifying cited how his car is 20km/h faster on the straights this weekend compared to 2023, which is nothing to be sniffed at.
Verstappen has won in each of the last two editions of the Italian GP at Monza, so is undefeated here since the switch to ground effect regulations. But his Red Bull was off the pace yesterday and starts seventh after lagging 0.695s behind Norris on new tyres in Q3 - having gone quicker on an older set in Q2. Here's what the Dutchman had to say after a puzzling display.
How much of the Red Bull team's struggles here can be put down to the fact that Monza is a very different circuit in nature, owing to its flat-out blasts? Well, Matt Somerfield suggests its rear wing choice hasn't helped matters. You can read his technical assessment here.
Drivers are now in their cars and preparing to head out onto the grid with a little over half an hour to go before the scheduled race start.
If McLaren are to cruise into the distance, it will help if a repeat of the team's poor start in Zandvoort can be avoided. Pressed on the matter by the media, Andrea Stella believes the team understands where it went wrong in the Dutch GP, which ultimately cost Piastri a podium chance and meant Norris had to fight back past Verstappen. Here's what the thoughtful Italian had to say.
George Russell will start today from third, which constitutes a good effort given he had to sit out FP1 for Kimi Andrea Antonelli - his new team-mate for next year - and then missed the first 25 minutes of FP2 while repairs were conducted to his car that Antonelli biffed at the Parabolica. The Briton admitted he was on the back foot for qualifying, but still outpaced team-mate Hamilton - who confessed to being was furious with himself for missing out on a pole shot.
Hamilton all but admitted yesterday that his chances of victory are now over, but on his last outing in Italy before he joins Ferrari next year, he'll be eager to put on a good show before the tifosi. Should he get onto the podium, he may have to contain his emotions better than Alain Prost managed in 1989, as Maurice Hamilton recalls in a retrospective feature for Plus subscribers that you can read here.
The grid is crowded with all the hustle and bustle you'd expect from Monza. Among the familiar faces in the crowd is actor Michael Douglas, who you may have seen in The Sentinel. A pretty good B-movie, I reckon.
The main question where the answer will surely reveal the outcome of this race is: 'how will the hard tyres fair with graining?' If they have as bad graining as seen on the mediums in FP2, then it's more likely this will be a two-stopper rather than the nailed on one-stopper of the past here given the high time loss in the pitlane. But none of the frontrunners used the hards in practice and so we can't predict which one may have a decisive advantage.
Plenty of intrigue surrounds the F1 debut of Argentine Franco Colapinto. The Williams newcomer, replacing Logan Sargeant, starts 18th and will hope he can make a similarly strong impression to Nyck de Vries - the Dutchman in the points as a last-minute stand-in for Alex Albon at Williams here in 2022.
Colapinto starts ahead of both Sauber drivers, with Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu sharing the back row of the grid. That's a scenario that doesn't please the bosses at Audi, who will assume control of the team for 2026 when it becomes a fully-fledged powertrain manufacturer as well as an entrant. In a media conference earlier today, Mattia Binotto made it clear that the Swiss team's current form cannot be accepted by the Audi hierarchy, in comments you can read here.
Max Verstappen was complaining about the understeer that suddenly impacted his Q3 handling, but this may have been a deliberate choice from Red Bull to protect the rears from graining in the race. If that's better for Red Bull than other squads, expect it to still be a factor. That's despite Verstappen's pessimism that "if you already have balance issues over one lap, then they won't be solved all of a sudden for the race".
We've come a fair way into the blog without paying much heed to Ferrari, which is frankly a sin at the team's home race. Charles Leclerc starts fourth, ahead of Carlos Sainz in fifth - the Spaniard marking his final outing for the Scuderia in front of the tifosi before he joins Williams next season in the seat currently being warmed by Colapinto. Both drivers were left to rue understeer costing them in the high-speed corners during qualifying.
One lovely stat for the day - it's Carlos Sainz's 30th birthday today. That adds a nice emotional touch to what was already going to be a fond farewell weekend on his last appearance (for now) as a Ferrari F1 driver at Monza. Happy birthday, Carlos.
Less than 20 minutes to go before the start. The weather couldn't be better; the air temperature is 33.6°C under sunny skies.
"It's going to be a long old tough race," remarks George Russell as he heads to the front of the grid for the pre-race ceremonies. Umbrella very much required for the purposes of keeping cool.
As you'd expect at Monza, there are absolutely hoardes of Ferrari fans decked out in red dotted around the grandstands here. But there's also the odd flash of papaya too.
National anthem time. Sung with gusto, as you'd expect in Italy. Are there many better-sounding anthems out there?
On the overtaking front, the main straight DRS zone is 100m longer than last year. Opinion is split in the paddock about whether this will make a difference. McLaren team boss Andrea Stella told me it might make battles such as Max Verstappen versus Carlos Sainz for the lead here last year easier for the chasing car. But at Aston Martin, team performance director Tom McCullough is unconvinced at this stage that it'll make a big difference.
The bigger impact for overtaking will surely be the tyre graining factor. If a driver pushes too hard too soon, they will lose pace dramatically, as could be seen in the FP2 degradation drop-off on laptimes. This also means the undercut power will be boosted and so pitstop timing calls become critical, but the reverse will be true if the graining is not as bad as feared.
The final element to be aware of pre-race on overtaking is how there were many small lock-ups and offs during long runs across each practice session. A paddock source tells me the graining is actually making it much harder for drivers slamming on the brakes here as the longer stints wear on. So, shock mistakes could also prove decisive to the outcome today.
Not long then until we discover which drivers have gone for which tyre compound. Anybody taking the blankets off to reveal softs are surely committing early to a two-stopper.
We said earlier that the weather conditions couldn't be much better. But the timing screens now tell us there's a 40% chance of rain. That's enough to be worth teams keeping an eye on.
Drivers are getting ready to climb into their cars. Time for a last word of advice from an engineer, or a last check of the scores in the Newcastle versus Spurs game (it's 0-0).
Will this be needed for real later on?
Five minutes to go. Who is nervous/excited/chilled/delete as appropriate?
Monza can and does often produce captivating races. Everything points to round 16 of the 2024 F1 world championship being one of those, especially after what we were treated to earlier in the junior categories. F3 title decided on the final corner? Check. F2 race won from the back of the grid? Check. What's in store for us this afternoon? Let's find out.
Tyre choices are revealed and nobody is on softs, but we do have several takers for the hard tyres. The first of those on the white side-wall rubber is Verstappen in seventh, with Perez adopting the same ploy.
Ocon, Tsunoda, Stroll and Bottas in positions 15-17 and 19 are also on the hards, along with the Red Bulls, while everybody else is on the medium.
Mechanics have vacated the grid as the formation lap begins.
Lando Norris leads the field around from his fifth F1 career pole position. Will today be the day he celebrates his third F1 victory?
Norris has to wait for Zhou to take his place before the lights sequence begins. Nearly time to go...
Wowzers! Norris gets the better of the start, as Russell has to take to the run-off at the first corner. But Piastri then passes Norris around the outside of the second chicane, with Norris delayed enough for Leclerc to take second into the first Lesmo.
End of lap one, Piastri leads from Leclerc and Norris. Who saw that coming? Verstappen meanwhile is complaining about Hamilton not leaving a car's width. They are running behind Sainz, with Hamilton fifth and Verstappen sixth ahead of Russell, who lost a huge amount of time in the run-off after trying to go aggressive on Piastri into the first corner.
Russell has had a nightmare - he's staving off Perez now.
Hulkenberg kicked a load of dust up down at Ascari and plummeted down to P16.
Can Piastri pull out of DRS range from Leclerc? That will be the major focus of the next few laps.
By: Autosport Staff
