If Lando Norris goes on to take the world title, he can thank McLaren’s benevolence – even-handed arguably to a fault – in Monza on Sunday during an Italian Grand Prix won by Max Verstappen.
The upshot of McLaren’s choreography of a dull race in the crammed royal park was that Norris finished runner-up and Oscar Piastri third. That means Norris narrows to within 31 points of the Australian at the championship summit.
The crucial call came following the pair’s pit stops late on. Piastri was in on lap 45 of 52, when lying third. Norris was in a lap later, from second. Fine so far.
But Norris’s front left tyre was slow going on and the Briton sat in his pit box waiting, hoping, praying for a release before the sun went down. The stop was 5.9sec in fact and he emerged back on track behind Piastri.
It seemed a cruel twist of the knife to Norris’s title hopes a week after he retired in Zandvoort with an oil leak. He sat on a sand dune then, wondering whether his dream was over.
But, controversially, McLaren ordered Piastri to cede his place to Norris. Piastri was less than impressed with this instruction, saying: ‘A slow pit stop is part of racing. I don’t really get what has changed here but I will do it.’
He did do it, and that was how it finished: Verstappen first by 19.2sec, Norris second, Piastri third.
After the chequered flag was waved, Piastri’s race engineer Tom Stallard said: ‘I appreciate it was painful, but I think we did the right thing. We can talk about it afterwards.’
One wonders whether McLaren would have given the instruction to trade positions but for the agony Norris’s engine problem of seven days earlier had visited on his psyche.
The next most dramatic of the afternoon’s drama came on lap one, with two wheels on the grass, tempers frayed, and Norris calling his pal Verstappen an ‘idiot’.
The lights went out. Verstappen was cleanly away from his finely sculpted pole position. Norris, starting second, was perhaps even brisker away. The track loses a lane as grass juts out along the start straight.
Verstappen held his line. As did Norris, but the configuration forced his right wheels on to the verge. Soil was thrown up into the air.
Into the first chicane, Rettifilo, the two men contested the lead. Verstappen cut the corner with nowhere to go and emerged ahead of Norris’s papaya McLaren.
‘What the %^&$!’ exclaimed Norris. ‘What is this idiot doing? Come on! He’s put me in the grass and then he’s cut the corner.’
Verstappen protested innocence for his detour: ‘He’s let the brakes go on purpose.’
Verstappen was told to hand the place back and obliged at the start of the second lap. But, wriggling like an eel, Verstappen went outside and inside at Rettifilo to make the pass on lap four that was to give the Dutchman his first win since Imola in May – an Italian double for him, a fine testament to his unquenchable need to win.
Lewis Hamilton, starting 10th after a five-place grid penalty from Holland, finished sixth on his Monza debut in a Ferrari, 37.4sec off Verstappen. Ahead of him were George Russell of Mercedes in fifth and Charles Leclerc in fourth, 12 seconds up the road in the other Ferrari.
