Lewis Hamilton, for his part, wasn’t quite on the best of form, although he was still very, very good. After a bit of a shaky getaway at the start, he soon made up for it and kept second place, even if
Felipe Massa did put him under quite a lot of pressure in those opening laps.
Late on, of course, Lewis dropped behind
Kimi Raikkonen, but his move to re-take P2 from what must have been about 50 metres behind the Finn was just astonishing. I have to take my hat off to him for that one - I haven’t seen anything like that for a long, long time. It was very clean and very committed. It also paid off and could well end up being one of the moves of the season. Top marks, Lewis!
All-in-all, considering everything
McLaren had to put up with in the build-up to the Monza weekend - and during it - it was a really remarkable result, and Ron Dennis’ satisfaction at the end was clear to see, even if the strain continues to be etched on his face.
On track, the silver cars were just unbeatable, and to do that on Ferrari’s home soil must have made it even sweeter.
The Scuderia looked to be a bit behind coming into the weekend after the pre-event test, but you never can tell from testing what precisely is going on. In the end, it was a fair indication and they just didn’t have the performance needed.
Massa’s reliability problems must also be a real concern and they are definitely on the back foot going to Spa.
You still can’t rule Kimi and Felipe out in terms of the drivers’ championship though – as it is still mathematically very possible for both of them to make up the gap to Lewis and Fernando - but you have got to say the odds really aren’t in their favour anymore, unless of course
that hearing ends up changing things. But let’s not think about that…
Of the rest,
BMW Sauber continued to do what they do, namely trail the top two, but convincingly beat the rest. Fourth and fifth for them was another good result and
Robert Kubica did especially well to come back after his issues in his pit-stop.
