2021 Formula One Italian Grand Prix

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For the third weekend in a row, Formula One is back in action. This time the field takes on the Monza circuit for the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.

Amidst one of the closest championship battles in in memory, Formula One’s field of 20 cars is taking on the legendary Temple of Speed this weekend. The Autodromo Nazionale di Monza is host to the 2021 Grand Prix and will test the teams’ abilities to field a car that prioritizes straight line speed.

The tight battle for the lead in the drivers' standings has now carried past the midway point of the season. Lewis Hamilton held a small advantage going into the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort a week ago, but that advantage has now flipped back to Max Verstappen after his exciting home win.

In the constructor’s championship, Mercedes has gained a 12-point lead after a double podium finish at Zandvoort. Like the drivers’ standings, this is another hotly contested battle that could easily be reversed if Red Bull has a strong result at Monza.

Much of the excitement away from the track has centred around the confirmation of George Russell joining the Mercedes team next season alongside Lewis Hamilton. Russell has impressed many in the F1 world with his performance in the lower-tier Williams car. He will be replacing Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes, who was confirmed to be moving to Alfa Romeo next season.

And speaking of Alfa Romeo, Kimi Räikkönen’s final season in Formula One has been cut short due to a positive Covid-19 test and associated protocol, and he’ll be replaced this weekend by Robert Kubica, who also stood in for the 2007 drivers’ champion last weekend as well.

Lando Norris’ amazing season has somewhat slowed over the past two weeks. The “technically a race” at Spa two weeks ago saw him finish outside of the points, and then a 10th place finish at the Dutch Grand Prix have dropped him from 3rd to 4th in the championship. His 114 points this season account for two-thirds of the McLaren team points, so the unfortunate results recently have allowed Ferrari to open a gap of 11.5 points in the constructors’ championship after having been tied recently. Excitement from the crowd will be high at Monza for the Ferrari duo of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz to maintain or expand this gap to McLaren.

So, the fight between Verstappen and Hamilton continues for another week, as does the battle between their respective teams. This looks to be another exciting week in the middle of an outstanding year of F1 action. Give us your thoughts below in the comments on who you think will emerge victorious at Monza.
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About author
Mike Smith
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

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Comments

M
Premium
To be fair I just enjoy seeing f1 cars going around a track, be it practice, qualifying, sprint race or the main event… in the 80’s/ 90’s I loved seeing winter testing/ driver testing up at Castle Donnington during my lunch hour (I used to pop out from my office in Ashby de la zouch)

if you love motorsport… more track time is is more happy time I find :)
 
Richard Wilks
Durge Driven said:
So 2 GP starts and more racing laps is not good for spectators ? again I ask in what universe ? lol
Click to expand...
In the universe that some spectators dont have all weekend to be watching TV, and it devalues the actual grand prix, the race itself, by having a series of races in the same weekend, and a race every other week.

A grand prix is an event. Like Alonso stated in the interview i posted, you don't see football coming up with gimmicks, changing championship rules every other year, or constantly worried with "boring" matches.

The sport is what it is. Either you like it, or you don't.

And the amazing thing is that they keep failling. The consensus is that the "sprint" race was a borefest past the 2 initial laps, and you didnt even had strategy or pit stops to help it.
 
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Durge Driven
Sorry personally I can't even consider anything negative about extra race laps

You are right the majority don't want to watch all weekend

I been saying for oinks they need to change race distance , why is this sacrilege I will never understand

3 1/2 distance races that everyone can be happy with ie: less boring
3 times the starts ! wow ! exciting but also 3 times practice for all on grid !
3 times the chance for any driver got bad finish no fault of their own
3 times the points up for grabs
1/2 times fuel you can see in sprint how cars look more hooked up

imo personally speaking ;)
 
M
Premium
Richard Wilks said:
In the universe that some spectators dont have all weekend to be watching TV
Click to expand...
Remember if you don’t have the time to watch it… you don’t have to… it’s not compulsory… :)

You can, if you so wish, just watch the GP on Sunday only, as the grid positions are set by whatever means anyway (usual quali or sprint race positions) so the grid you see on Sunday is just ‘the grid’… and doesn’t need to be over thought really. :)
 
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BrainsBush
AncalagonTotof said:
Isn't Verstappen responsible for Gasly crash.
Not directly.
But I think he push Norris a bit too much outside the track, in the 1st chicane.
Norris had to release throttle, perhaps even brake.
And Gasly could not avoid contact.

Perhaps Verstappen has inherited Schumacher's "luck" from the early 2000s. He remember GP starts being like : start / crash in the first corners / is M. S. OK ?
- yes : let them continue / get the safety car out
- no : red flag, red flag / let him get to the spare car !
Click to expand...

I hoped you answered my question ;)

It was Ricciardo who had to break because he was very close to Max. No - I think - Verstappen is not responsible for the crash. Feel sorry for Gasly. He was/is performing very well and it could spice up the battle in the top 5 during this sprint race.

 
T
Badwheels said:
I finally have figured something out. Lewis Hamilton has lost his reaction time. The Red Bull and Max is fast, but Lewis is not driving well. He hasn't had a decent start in who knows when. That isn't the car it's him. And he doesn't seem to see things as quickly as he used to. There is a lag on track in his ability to analyze things. He is not driving up to his former standards.

The decline has started.
Click to expand...

That had nothing to do with reaction times, he simply was too agressive releasing the clutch, that can happen to anybody on the grid. This season he seems more terrenal because for the first time in 7 years we have a close championship between Hamilton and a rival that isn't controlled by Toto. He hasn't forgotten how to drive or physically decay in just the months between the end of the 2020 season to the pre-season of 2021.

It's simply that now he no longer can race almost all season long in sandbagging engine modes making it seem as we are watching a close races in where Lewis is making the difference by himself. When in reality it's just a mercedes thing they do to avoid the FIA triggering a regulations change like they did with Ferrari in 2005, a similar thing as what they have been doing every season 3 to 4 times per season in where they engineer a dissaster weekend so other teams can win a race.

Now that they no longer can sandbag with 0.5 to 1.5s race pace advantage at hand in races they could win by 50 seconds if they wanted to, if mercedes screws the strategy or lewis makes a mistake he no longer can go into Hammertime mode by just selecting a higher engine mode in his steering wheel and instantly pick up the pace half a second or more out of nowhere.

No longer he can crush the opposition and make the other drivers and the rival teams strategists seem like useless fools, hiding any driving mistakes and making work any strategy call no matter how wrong it could be. And after that fans and press would praise them as the stragegic gods and racing gods.

He probably feels more compelled to take risks now because not only he is fighting against Verstappen on track, he is fighting against his own bigger than life aura. He and his fans embraced for years that GOAT status and it now adds pressure because if he looses against what is been sold to us as a inferior driver it won't fit the narrative.

And fans may react and reevaluate his legacy even further than Russel's performance did last year making a lot of people reevaluated Hamilton's mercedes tenure and put it in a different perspective.

I'm still firmly convinced that mercedes is fooling redbull, making them believe that it's their championship to loose in order to force them in develop the car until the end of the season. Redbull is updating the car in almost every race, and still, mercedes without almost any visible update always has an aswer to everything redbull throws at them. In Austria mercedes was 3 tenths behind redbull in qualy, two weeks later Hamilton was on route to outqualify Verstappen by half a second, that's a 8 tenths delta in just 2 weeks and I don't believe in fairies.

They are playing with rbr and they haven't told to their drivers about it so they can act naturally to make it more believable. If I'm wrong then mercedes should be outdeveloped as the races progress, they should be loosing pace more and more instead of keeping the pace delta with rbr.
 
Badwheels
TRASGU said:
That had nothing to do with reaction times, he simply was too agressive releasing the clutch, that can happen to anybody on the grid. This season he seems more terrenal because for the first time in 7 years we have a close championship between Hamilton and a rival that isn't controlled by Toto. He hasn't forgotten how to drive or physically decay in just the months between the end of the 2020 season to the pre-season of 2021.

It's simply that now he no longer can race almost all season long in sandbagging engine modes making it seem as we are watching a close races in where Lewis is making the difference by himself. When in reality it's just a mercedes thing they do to avoid the FIA triggering a regulations change like they did with Ferrari in 2005, a similar thing as what they have been doing every season 3 to 4 times per season in where they engineer a dissaster weekend so other teams can win a race.

Now that they no longer can sandbag with 0.5 to 1.5s race pace advantage at hand in races they could win by 50 seconds if they wanted to, if mercedes screws the strategy or lewis makes a mistake he no longer can go into Hammertime mode by just selecting a higher engine mode in his steering wheel and instantly pick up the pace half a second or more out of nowhere.

No longer he can crush the opposition and make the other drivers and the rival teams strategists seem like useless fools, hiding any driving mistakes and making work any strategy call no matter how wrong it could be. And after that fans and press would praise them as the stragegic gods and racing gods.

He probably feels more compelled to take risks now because not only he is fighting against Verstappen on track, he is fighting against his own bigger than life aura. He and his fans embraced for years that GOAT status and it now adds pressure because if he looses against what is been sold to us as a inferior driver it won't fit the narrative.

And fans may react and reevaluate his legacy even further than Russel's performance did last year making a lot of people reevaluated Hamilton's mercedes tenure and put it in a different perspective.

I'm still firmly convinced that mercedes is fooling redbull, making them believe that it's their championship to loose in order to force them in develop the car until the end of the season. Redbull is updating the car in almost every race, and still, mercedes without almost any visible update always has an aswer to everything redbull throws at them. In Austria mercedes was 3 tenths behind redbull in qualy, two weeks later Hamilton was on route to outqualify Verstappen by half a second, that's a 8 tenths delta in just 2 weeks and I don't believe in fairies.

They are playing with rbr and they haven't told to their drivers about it so they can act naturally to make it more believable. If I'm wrong then mercedes should be outdeveloped as the races progress, they should be loosing pace more and more instead of keeping the pace delta with rbr.
Click to expand...
Naw, he is losing it. Even if his "aggressive release" was the reason, he wouldn't have made that mistake before. Maybe engine modes used to make a difference if you wanted to hide something, but if that is no longer allowed, you just turn up the engine and kick ass from the get go.
I don't think Merc is so brilliant that they said, "oh let them kill themselves this year and we will kill them in the years to come". Hell Merc still hasn't figure out how to do a pit stop in less than 2 minutes. Their race strategy hasn't been in Einstein territory either lately.

George Russell is Mercedes now. Toto is no fool. He knows Lewis is on the decline. Watch how bad Lewis will be next year. Lewis better pray he gets the outright lead in drivers championships this year. No tomorrow for him
 
BrainsBush
Hopefully Gasly's pre race bad engine will be solved for him?
===
Have a good race. Enjoy!

Edit: Yuki DNS
 
Last edited:
LeSunTzu
That's utterly disgusting. I would never had imagined Max doing something like that.
 
Last edited:
D
As i don't like Hamilton i'm happy about the crash so no point for him but it's bad for the race
 
Interslice
Staff
Premium
Is that the familiar Hamilton understeer. Back fires for him on this occasion.
 

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