Verstappen rewrites Wikipedia – Up and down in Monza

Who reads Wikipedia? ‘Not me’ said Toto Wolff as he tried to block out the image of all those open tabs on his mobile’s internet browser:

‘Most consecutive race wins? Most consecutive team wins? If only Nico hadn’t gotten in the way! I wouldn’t even have to be answering all these tedious Sky questions. Where’s Bradley Lord when you need him?’ he probably-maybe thought.

These were of course the killer queries floating around the post-storm, tree-less Monza, which served as a nice metaphor for what the brilliant Max Verstappen and Red Bull have done to the F1 championship the season. It’s been a right old razin’.

Brackley’s communications guru Lord left us all predictably six-e-fan-tokens-none-the-wiser about anything that was going on in the race or why Mercedes did what and when, as he made his now semi-frequent but inexplicable cameo to deliver some non-speak on live TV.

Everyone knows if you want to know what’s going on, don’t ask the PR people…

Goin’ down

Penalties simply paltry

Time to review the ‘one size fits all’ penalty approach?

Hamilton carelessly moved over on Piastri into the second chicane, breaking the Aussie’s front wing and ruining his race.

Meanwhile the seven-time champ was just given a 5sec penalty for his transgression, which meant nothing as he was easily able to pull away from the 200mph Williams F1 wine cork which is Alex Albon.

Les Misérables

The Alpine machines were clearly down on power to other cars, and had simply no chance in either quali or the race. Wretched stuff, particularly after a podium last time out – at least it shows how competitive F1 is.

Moaning Mexican

“He gave me no space!” cried Perez time and again when trying to pass Sainz. Err, it’s a race, Checo.

Tiring strategies

No one wants a one-stop. If you’re going to make them run all the compounds in qualifying, just do it in the race too. Though that would give Ferrari even more scope to put its fans through the usual fortnightly misery.

Goin’ up

Sit back and relax

The Scuderia’s strategy to do with, well anything, looks confused at the best of times, but the boys and girls did do something right in Monza – nothing.

Ferrari’s chargers were told oxymoronically to “race – with no risk” but Sainz and Leclerc just went at it anyway. Glorious.

I fought the Lawson and the Lawson won

Another assured performance from AlphaTauri supersub Liam Lawson, who finished just shy of the points. Daniel Ricciardo must be hating it.

Loving Le Mans

Go on then, Ferrari gets two entries. Applause goes to their subtle yet smart Le Mans-win-themed livery – it’s extremely refreshing for anyone in F1 to acknowledge any other type of motor sport even exists, even though it’s all under the Scuderia umbrella.

Alfa’s was nice too.

Landmark result

Alfa Romeo actually scored a point with Valtteri Bottas too! For the first time in six races – rejoice. Time for another special edition livery.