How Hamilton made it look easy at Monza

In the end Lewis Hamilton made it look easy at Monza, but no grand prix win is as straightforward as it might appear from the outside. Even with the advantage of starting from pole you have to get everything just right, and manage the tyres to perfection over a race distance. And, as we saw last weekend with both his own McLaren team-mate Jenson Button and Red Bull rival Sebastian Vettel, F1 cars can still break down.

But at Monza everything worked out just perfectly for Lewis, and the fact that the three innocent victims of the first-corner crash at Spa finished on the podium said a lot about how quickly fortunes can change in this game.

With blue skies on Friday for once, McLaren and its rivals had a proper chance to sort their cars and assess the tyres, a luxury that has been missing at several recent races. And, as ever, a priority at Monza was getting the downforce level just right. In contrast to Spa a week earlier, there was no split between the two drivers.

"We had many different wing levels," says sporting director Sam Michael. "And we only chose to analyse two on Friday, and by Friday afternoon it was pretty clear which one we should be on. The same for both cars, and that was it. It was very straightforward."

"In the past when we used to test then you could be a bit more ambitious, shall we say, with set-ups round Monza," says principal race engineer Phil Prew. "It is very much a unique race. We have a Monza downforce package which was developed, and then we had a few options around there. But the permutations were relatively small, to be honest. Where we ended up was the right trade.

Hamilton was strong right from the start © LAT

"We probably could have had a faster qualifying set-up, but that would have hurt us in the race, so you've got to find the trade off between qualifying and race pace. You would accept more downforce as we've seen in the last two or three years. With the trade off DRS in qualifying you can afford to run high downforce and use the DRS, but obviously in the race you don't have the difference. That's the trade off that you have to make."

If any qualifying performance was sacrificed it wasn't evident on Saturday afternoon when Hamilton and Button annexed the front row, Lewis making a point of telling us that it wasn't his greatest lap. Fernando Alonso had been a threat, and perhaps could have snuck ahead had he not had problems, but it was 'job done' for McLaren.

There was plenty to think about for the race, however. A one-stop strategy was always the target, but Monza is a special challenge, and there were still a few question marks about tyres. As at Spa, Pirelli had created special 'thin gauge' tyres to head off blistering, but managing them was something of a fine art. It wasn't an entirely clear-cut choice, and for example Mercedes - concerned after its attempt at a one-stop failed at Spa - went for two stops.

The hope at McLaren was obviously that the two cars would be able to run away at the front, control the race, and react to what everyone else was doing. It only half worked, as Jenson was beaten away by Felipe Massa. That made running JB's race a little more complicated, and being in a fight he would potentially work his tyres harder than Lewis, who could do his own thing out front.

"You never have the opportunity to run the tyres quite that long in practice sessions," Prew explains. "You do the best you can but really you're entering into unknown territory as you start pushing the tyres longer and longer. To be honest it was just about managing the tyres, managing our pace to look after the tyres, and maintaining our performance.

"We've all seen over the year that you can get to a cliff and then there's a very sudden drop. We need to make sure we avoid that at all times. We had target pitstop laps, we wanted to make sure we got beyond 20 laps with the first set, and we managed that with both drivers. We were in the fortunate position that we could wait for all the other cars to pit and then pit ourselves."

Button managed to pass Massa © LAT

Button stopped on lap 22 and, despite a glitch in the stop, he achieved his objective of staying safely ahead of Massa, who had pitted three laps earlier, immediately after Jenson had passed him.

Lewis came in on lap 23 after what was a reasonably long run. Indeed only Bruno Senna and Daniel Ricciardo went further from the start on the option tyre, both coming in on lap 24 - but they started on new sets, while Hamilton's had been used in qualifying.

McLaren was relieved to discover that in the first stint the tyres showed no signs of any undue problems.

"The main thing today was to look after the tyres," says Michael. "As it turned out our shoulder wear on the front tyres was OK, but until you've done the race, you don't know that. Once we'd done that first pitstop we realised we could lean on it reasonably hard if we had to. Then we were just driving to finish.

"Lewis's strategy was quite straightforward, we probably put more energy into Jenson, because he was closer to the rest of the pack. Unfortunately in Jenson's case he had a bad start, which we'll analyse."

"Looking at the tyres that came off gave us the confidence that the next stint would be OK," says Prew. "It's difficult to really know, but we were monitoring it through the race, and we were happy that we could push them all the way to the end.

"We planned to do one stop, but the track had changed since Friday, we're doing more laps, etc, so it's always a little bit different. As soon as we'd got through lap 15 or so then a one-stop looked realistic."

Indeed Hamilton was still lapping quickly when he pitted, and he could have gone further had he needed to. The unexpected complication was that Sergio Perez had stayed in touch with his long opening run on the hards, and, after pitting, Lewis had to spend a few laps behind the Sauber.

"I think we ran quite conservatively," insists team boss Martin Whitmarsh. "We were still going green when we stopped. We could clearly do a one-stop, we were looking after the tyres and the car. We were very fortunate in comparison with our competitors in that we had the gaps so we could go into clear air - except for Perez, although obviously we knew he was going to have to stop. I don't think anyone expected Sergio to be quite as quick as that!

Perez charged hard, but Hamilton was out of reach © LAT

"That bit's easy, that's what you can do, if you've got the pace and you've got the track position. You can really control what's happening in the race. We were conservative, as I say, with our tyre strategy."

It was all going swimmingly until a fuel-system problem stopped Jenson on lap 33.

"We knew for about a lap, but there was no point bothering him, in case it was a sensor problem," Michael explains. "We were busy trying different things, telling him to change settings, but it didn't work anyway.

"We had some indications that we were in trouble," says Prew. "And we tried to apply some defaults to get us home, but they weren't sufficient, and it stopped. With the opportunity we had it's very disappointing to have a DNF."

As McLaren came to terms with the frustrating retirement it became apparent that, after dropping well behind following his pitstop, Perez might still be in the picture.

Having dealt with the Ferraris he moved into second place on lap 46, and with seven still to go he was 11.2s behind. He wasn't quite going fast enough to catch Lewis, but it was close enough for the team to send a wake-up call to its driver.

"There was no issue with him beating us," says Michael. "It was more a case of, 'we've got a gap, don't kill the gap in case you have a moment or something like that'. Lewis responded but still kept a bit up his sleeve."

"We saw him coming," says Lowe. "We didn't actually warn Lewis until he'd cleared Fernando, and then we told him the situation. The reason for that was we still felt Lewis was still driving well within the pace of the car, managing the tyres, managing the stress on the car. We knew that he had some more to go, and with that we had plenty of margin against Sergio. There wasn't any panic."

"I think the pace of Perez in the final half of the race surprised us a little bit," says Prew. "But we had some in the tank to be able to respond. When we told Lewis to respond he was able to do that. We didn't tell him until Perez had gone through the Ferraris, at which point we told him. We were able to explain he was on a different strategy on the option tyre, and Lewis reacted very calmly and eked out a little bit of lap time. I think he had it well under control."

McLaren made good strategic calls for its drivers © LAT

Lewis was a handy 4.5s ahead at the flag, but given that the gap had been as high as 24.4s shortly after the Mexican's stop and with 20 laps to go, it was a pretty impressive effort.

"Perez was strong, but it's only because he did a reverse strategy by running on that prime and then switching to option," says Michael. "He threw the dice because he had to, and it paid off well. It was very good. A lot of it obviously came from the strategy, but the car was pretty handy as well. I was watching the on-board shot of him going through Ascari, he was running in the 1m27s, and it was so hooked up. A really tidy car, that one."

Certainly the strategy worked spectacularly well, but there was more to it than that, given that the likes of Pastor Maldonado and Nico Hulkenberg also started on the harder tyre. They faced a different challenge coming from the back, but it didn't work anything like as well - and the Williams driver ultimately stopped twice.

Sauber may be a threat from time to time, but in the big picture it's Red Bull, Ferrari and Lotus that matter. The fact that McLaren has now won three races in a row, on quite different tracks, is encouraging for the men from Woking.

"One has to take a lot of positives from the fact that both drivers are able to go fast and use the car well," says Prew. "It's clearly working, and our continual string of updates that we are able to deploy are working. Our championship hopes have improved this weekend, so we we'll keep pushing. We have more updates to come, then we go to Singapore which again is very different. We'll see how we go there."

"The main challenge now is what's going to happen in Singapore," says Michael. "Red Bull haven't been as strong over the past couple of races, but I expect them to return to form in Singapore. People have upgrades in Singapore as well. We've been on a couple of unusual circuits for lift/drag ratio, but Red Bull's race pace at Spa was pretty good anyway. They had a bad run at Monza, but I expect them to be up there.

"That's why it was disappointing to lose JB, because it would have made a massive difference in the constructors'. The retirements hurt them, but they've still got a big lead, and there's a lot of work to do."