Mercedes
Russell started third but braked too late for Turn 1 and his car became a little unstable. That sent him off track and when he managed to get through the bollards he ended up rejoining in seventh with front wing damage. An early stop for a new front wing cost him, meaning the rest of his afternoon was spent battling with Perez. As for Hamilton, he was in a bit of a no-man’s land. He didn’t have the pace to chase down the Ferraris and McLarens but managed to finish comfortably ahead of his old nemesis Verstappen.
Lewis Hamilton, 5th
“We didn’t have the pace to fight for more. The McLarens and the Ferraris in particular were strong. I managed to keep up with Sainz but couldn’t do the longer stint or the one-stop that he was able to do. If we had started ahead of him, we might have been able to keep him at bay. Ultimately, though, we needed a better balance with the car today to achieve much more.
“It’s a shame to end a weekend where we looked very strong without achieving anything more. We looked good during practice and qualifying, but we couldn’t match it today. The field is very tight now and it will be fascinating to see what happens in the next races. We will continue to work hard and hope to have a stronger race in Baku in two weeks.”
George Russell, seventh
“Today was a frustrating day. In the end, we didn’t have the pace to fight for the podium, but my race fell apart at the first corner. It’s disappointing when that happens after all the efforts the team put in over the weekend. I made a good start, but got caught in the dirty air behind Piastri. I blocked to avoid him and suffered some damage to the front wing. That compromised my first stint and we lost time at the pit stop as the wing had to be changed.
“Our pace has not been as good as it was before the summer break, neither here nor at Zandvoort. As a team, we will push ourselves and find out why. Other teams seem to have made a step forward, so we will have to work hard to get back to their level.”
Toto Wolff, director of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
“Congratulations to Ferrari and Charles Leclerc on a well-deserved win today. It’s always a special moment when the scarlet red car wins here at Monza. Our race was better than Zandvooror, but it was still not great. We completed the two-stop strategy as we were suffering from graining on the front left tyre, making a one-stop strategy unlikely. It was a difficult challenge to manage and hard to know whether to commit to the one-stop strategy or push harder and go to two-stop. However, our pace today made it difficult to score much more than we did from either option.
“In the last two races we have not performed at the level we had before the summer break. When you have no pace, strategic decisions become more difficult, as we saw today. We now have time to analyse why before Baku and we aim to come back stronger.”
Andrew Shovlin, Director of Track Engineering
“We didn’t have a very good race today. Looking ahead to the Grand Prix, we knew that the tyres were going to be fragile and that we would probably need to manage them a bit to make the long stints work. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the pace to be able to manage the tyres and keep up with our competitors.
“Lewis finished fifth after the first lap and came home in that same position. We tried the two-stop strategy against Sainz because it seemed unlikely we would be able to pass him on track. Unfortunately, we couldn’t catch the Ferrari in the final stint. Meanwhile, George had a difficult first lap; he had to go off at the first corner and then broke his front end at the second chicane. That led to an early and long stop. We could potentially have gained a place on Verstappen if we had committed to the one-stop, but ultimately the damage on the first lap was the biggest cost. It seems we have lost some pace relative to our rivals since the summer break. We will go and investigate why that is and what we need to do to put in a more competitive performance in Baku.”