“Plan B.”
Welcome back to another double bill of Dre’s Race Review! This week marks one of F1’s real big-hitter races, as it’s time for the Italian Grand Prix. And despite a back-of-the-grid penalty for Kimi Antonelli going into the weekend, it just didn’t matter as he won a classic from 18th on the grid, while Ferrari imploded yet again, only this time in front of the Tifosi. Let’s talk about it.
Gasly Magic
It already feels unfair that so much went down on Sunday that Saturday already feels like an afterthought, but there was the small matter of PIERRE GASLY ON POLE, WHAT IN THE FUC-
Yeah, this was pretty spectacular. And it was a lot of elements all coming together. Alpine had a special set of wings they kept from pre-season testing stashed for the occasion knowing it worked for their car on a low downforce track. They pulled off the teammate towing perfectly – Yes, there is a science to it. Be in the two-second range, what you gain in the straights, you will lose with the dirty air in the corners. 5-6 seconds, and you don’t get enough benefit to make the effort worth it. Gasly and Colapinto nailed their timing and got it right exactly when it mattered. Add in a Mercedes power-unit and a man who has a knack of spectacular qualifying laps on occasion, and ka-boom!
It was enough to take pole by 0.06 of a second over George Russell, who got too close to Max Verstappen, who took control of the queue at the Parabolica. A golden opportunity wasted after Kimi was a free tow given he was going to back of the field anyway for three new power-unit components. Also shoutout to McLaren who botched their Q3 with Piastri going over the chicane at Turn 2 and killing Lando’s main lap, and Liam Lawson for failing to make Q3.
Stats wise, it’s the first Enstone pole position since Fernando Alonso at the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix (No, they never had one under Lotus), and it’s the first for a Frenchman since Jean Alesi at the same track back in 1997. And with it Gasly becomes F1’s 109th Grand Prix winner and Polesitter. Wild.
Fun fact: Gasly was 66/1 odds to take pole position. For perspective, Kimi Antonelli was 12/1 to win the race FROM THE BACK.
Statement Of Intent
For the race itself, we got one of its most dramatic moments right off the bat. Lewis Hamilton goes for a send at Turn 1, and was side-by-side at Turn 2, with Charles Leclerc running Hamilton four wheels off on exit. This would best be described as a “sketchy” one, but the talk of that quickly dissipated. Leclerc, while under pressure from Oscar Piastri, puts a wheel on the paint and grilling, has a snap of oversteer and goes straight into the outside tyre wall with a 60G impact. A horrible smash, thankfully Charles is seemingly okay, getting a once over tonight before heading to Madrid.
The Red Flag comes out here to fix the barrier for half an hour. And this put the race in a very delicate situation. It’s Lap 4. A 50-lap run on the Hards is doable, but you risk the drop off at the very end. Everyone can make the switch to the hard for free now under red, because saving a stop is worth 24 seconds to your overall time. But how confident are you that you can make the flag? The only man who can’t make this gamble, is Kimi Antonelli who despite having to start on the hard, is already P13. He stays, but Russell and Gasly switch to the Hards, while Hamilton and Verstappen switch to Mediums. Pirelli says they can go to the end on them… I wasn’t so sure, but I personally thought it was a gamble worth taking.
We get another standing restart and by the end of Lap 6, Kimi Antonelli is… P8. Holy shit. Two monster starts immediately put the Italian in win contention, and he picked off most of the field quickly. Russell and Verstappen are battling back and forth relentlessly, swapping P1 like a hot potato due to their differing deployment. And next thing you know, Kimi gets the pair of them and takes the lead himself. It’s Lap 15. We now have this mad scenario where Mercedes and Verstappen are fighting for the lead, while Hamilton, Piastri, Norris and the fading Gasly are also fighting for third. Carnage!
Toto Wolff had to put a kibosh on the fun to pull rank and try to gap Verstappen, but they couldn’t do that AND keep Kimi behind, so Max was still in range when the second major strategic flashpoint of the race happened. Lance Stroll has to park his car at the Curva Grande due to a hydraulics failure. Decision time – Are you still confident you can make the flag? If so, carry on and see what happens. If not, you have a chance to bail and pit via Virtual Safety Car. It’s going to cost you 15 seconds and track position, but you can comfortably make the flag from half distance and push. Russell stays out, Antonelli and Verstappen come in for Mediums and Hards respectively.
They drop to fifth and sixth but quickly make gains back to where they were on track. And Antonelli cannot be stopped on those medium tyres. He was 13 seconds behind George on the road, but he methodically chips away at the gap and with four laps to go, finally passes Russell for the lead and for the win. It wasn’t the cleanest of exchanges, Kimi nearly put himself in a gravel trap the lap prior, but he got there in the end.
Kimi Antonelli has just won the Italian Grand Prix from nineteenth on the grid. Wow.
The Aftermath
It’s the first Italian winner at home since England won the World Cup. A heck of a Plan B for all the Tifosi who were originally there for Ferrari. And while he only adds seven points to his Championship lead on teammate George Russell, this felt like an emotional killshot.
Now I don’t normally entertain the “narrative” angles too hard on here because I tend to think it’s lazy. On one hand, Russell was unfortunate. The VSC screwed him. It took roughly nine seconds off of Kimi’s race time. Add that time back on, he still wins. Even without it, his strategy was only about four laps away from working. Instead, he’s lost in a rather embarrassing fashion.
But if I’m not being so nice, I can say… George missed an open goal across the board this weekend. He wasn’t aware enough to maximise his chances in Qualifying, even if Gasly didn’t really affect the front running. But for me, the real cardinal sin was getting into a dogfight with Max Verstappen that he didn’t need to. He had to make a 50-lap stint work, why are you pushing so hard to protect your position? He burned too much time fighting, and likely, too much tire over the race.
It just exposes what many are only finally realising – Russell’s 2026 season is cooked. It’s game over. There’s probably nine rounds (and one Sprint) left. He’s 66 points back, that’s nearly three wins back. He’s not been good enough in any major department all season and I think he’s done a very good job of masking how much he doesn’t like the 2026 car. I know he’s always hated Miami, but when he admitted he was changing his driving style to try and make things work, I was concerned there were deeper issues at play. And that’s weird because he was battle hardened by a very rough Williams in his early career and was fast the moment he joined Mercedes in 2022. Something about these new cars isn’t gelling with him and it’s going to cost him his first real shot at a World Championship.
George hasn’t been the only struggler in this department, more on that later, but Antonelli winning from 19th and breaking your ankles like Allen Iverson to do it is surely an emotional hammer blow, just a fortnight after being told to step aside for your teammate in Zandvoort. It feels like we’re done here and I think it’s going to take a drastic change for that to change.
Then there’s Ferrari. Who I’m sorry, needs someone in that team to sit everyone down and tell them to get real. After qualifying in Row 2, Lewis Hamilton insinuated that Ferrari needed to go all-in on his title campaign. This despite being 59 points behind Kimi, and 28 ahead of Leclerc going into Monza. On head-to-heads, they’re 9-9 in Quali sessions with Leclerc on average ahead by 0.02, according to The Race. Hamilton’s 8-5 up in races, but Leclerc’s 4-1 up in Sprints. And Lewis has had six penalties in races this year, all of which, his fault. I’m sorry, but that’s not enough of a decisive advantage to be telling Charles to shut it down for the year.
And I think all this dialogue ignores the bigger picture. This was a power-unit regulation set that Ferrari screwed up on. They’ve never really been title contenders, just flattered by Mercedes leaving a boatload of points on the table via poor early reliability that they seem to have solved. I don’t think keeping Hamilton out was a poor tactical call, especially given we didn’t know how the Medium/Hard tyre would last at Lap 50 as opposed to Lap 25 and the whole point of Monza is to run that race in as little stops as you think you can get away with. Ferrari just didn’t have the tyre wear down the stretch.
As we’ve seen many times before, Ferrari went all out for their home race. Custom Michael Schumacher 1996 tribute livery. A new power-unit courtesy of the ADUO upgrade system. They got beaten comprehensively across the weekend. Hamilton did himself no favours by sending it on Lap 1, Turn 1 on his teammate at the first chicane via a really narrow angle, but Leclerc shouldn’t be running his teammate four wheels off the track. From both sides of the aisle, this felt unnecessary.
And if Lewis Hamilton in my opinion hasn’t been good enough to demand #1 status, Charles Leclerc sure as hell hasn’t done enough to merit the crash he puts the car into. It’s classic Charles Leclerc hero ball, where he tries too hard to make up for a shitty situation, he makes a high profile mistake, and he crashes. And given we as humans are wired more negatively, we tend to remember those mistakes more than anything good he’s done on track. It’s a raw deal, but it’s also Year 8 of Charles in red, he has to stop making these kinds of errors.
Everyone on this team thinks they’re an anime protagonist. Goku. Yugi Muto. Jonathan Joestar. They’re not. They’re Yamcha snuggling with a Saibaman. I hope if nothing else, Lewis Hamilton finishing 25 seconds off the win was a reality check that Ferrari is not ready to win consistently yet.
He can take the moral high ground all he wants with the media in regards to Leclerc’s racing tactics, the “rules of engagement” at Mercedes (A relationship that become so toxic due to three major wheel-to-wheel clashes that both drivers were sacked after Barcelona 2016, only brought back due to neither party being predominately to blame and Mercedes has never been the same since), and claiming he’s always been a clean driver (Very much up for debate), it’s easily done when your teammate’s in a catch fence.
And why isn’t Fred Vasseur being called into question more often? Technically, Ferrari’s fallen short again of where they need to be, and if Hamilton’s now openly saying: “Take it up with the boss”, it says he’s lost control of his talent. No more jokes with the media and pranks with other teams, it’s time to start being a leader and having rules for engagement. Otherwise, this is going to keep coming up and it’s going to be a shitstorm that could be avoided. We shouldn’t be talking this way about a pair of drivers with over 600 starts and 25 years of experience between them.
The Rest Of The Lightning Round
I’m still getting over the fact that the best Ferrari of the weekend was Sebastian Vettel, driving Michael Schumacher’s F2002, with a helmet that merged their designs together. It was emotional, it is visceral, it was beautiful. And to think, we used to boo that man for pointing a finger as a celebration and winning too much. Man, we’re stupid. We’re blessed to have him as an active person in this sport.
It’s ridiculous that Alpine had an amazing Italian GP (Realistically, 7th and 9th was about as good as they were going to get), and they left Italy with less points than when they entered. Turns out the International Court of Appeal ruled against them in terms of the Monaco GP Podium. Now if you want a deeper explanation, hit up my social media where I made a full video on the topic, but in layman’s terms and how I understood the meeting – Alpine claimed the pitlane was shorter than the FIA’s measurement because they (and others) were cutting the track because of the awkward placement of Cadillac’s garage, as they weren’t used to having 11 teams down there.
Essentially, even if the measurements were wrong geometrically (Which they likely were), that’s down to the FOM to work out and implement, not Alpine’s interpretation. Gasly was just as guilty as everyone else who sped, and it’s the team’s responsibility to calibrate their pit limiters correctly. He gets knocked back to seventh, so Isack Hadjar gets his first Red Bull podium after having to wait three months for a final result. Gasly still had an excellent weekend mind you, and Franco Colapinto could have been right up there as well if it weren’t for getting a tank slapper on from the restart in third. Franco was in tears afterwards when acknowledging his mistake. He’s a good kid, and I know he’ll bounce back.
And another sincere question – Charles Leclerc has been panned this season for largely that three race skid in Monaco, Barcelona and Canada where Hamilton got hot for a minute. I look down the grid and I see Oscar Piastri. Winless for a full calendar year. Nine races since his last podium finish while Lando Norris had a pair of wins and had people talking about a genuine title push after Zandvoort. Why has Piastri seemingly gotten away with it? I suspect it’s because he’s become a genuine media darling with his dry sense of humour, Grill the Grid wins and generally not putting his foot in his mouth. But we’ve roasted others way harder for less than the 55 points he sits behind Lando right now.
Speaking of Lando, genuinely excited to see that he’s bought AIX and is forming LN4 Fusion as a racing team. If you missed the announcement, it’s a purchase of some of their assets with plans to have a team in F2, F3, British F4, Italian F4, FREC and GB3, via Rene Rosin, ex-head of Prema Racing, and Dan Richards as CEO. He’s also planning a scholarship fund for drivers who may need funding.
It’s a fascinating investment, easily the biggest in junior Motorsport since Lawrence Stroll, and that was all for his son to be able to race. Helps when you’ve got a very rich family behind you that can chip in when you have a plan. Lando is a very smart brander and this is a great feather in his cap to have. If he finds the right talent, he could potentially ladder them up from British/Italian F4 or FREC all the way up the final F1 bottleneck. It’s going to be years before we can fairly quantify the return on this, but it’s admirable he’s giving it a go.
Looks like it’ll be announced this week that Qatar and Abu Dhabi won’t be happening, and it seems Imola will be the new season finale on December 6th. Average Imola December temperature? 2-9 degrees. Given how sketchy Canada was in May, this is not going to be ideal. At all. I suspect they’ll send F2 there for the traditional end of season fare (And Europe is way cheaper), but shipping the series off elsewhere to make up for that one other lost round is likely going to be expensive for everyone involved.
Haas and Williams haven’t scored a point since Monaco. Man, they’ve really been pummelled by the midfield of Audi, Racing Bulls and Alpine establishing themselves for minor points. Aston Martin’s outscored them in that same time frame.
The Verdict: 8.5/10 (Excellent) – Best F1 race of 2026 for me. I really enjoyed this one. I don’t care what you tell me about yo-yo’ing, this was an action-packed race that breezed by after the Red Flag break, with back and forth between Mercedes and Verstappen, then the strategic element of splitting strats led to a nice crescendo at the end. About as great as a GP gets without major shenanigans getting in the way. If you didn’t like that race, I don’t know why you’re watching to be honest with you. See you for the… *sighs*… Madring.
⭐ – Recommended Rewatch (Going forward, any race I score an 8 or better, is officially a race I’d happily rewatch. Consider it an Elite Stamp.)
