![\" \u00a9](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Vettel-2008-Monza-Win.jpg\")
<\/p>\nYou are Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa, heading to the 2008 Italian Grand Prix, locked in a fierce fight for the F1 world title, after a controversial penalty last time out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hamilton had been stripped of his Belgian GP win after a stewards’ penalty, with Massa inheriting the win to reduce Hamilton’s points lead to just two, as Massa faced the biggest test of the season: the Tifosi at Monza.<\/p>\n
The only problem was that a dreadful weather forecast lay in store, with Saturday and Sunday set to be wet. Very wet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enter one Sebastian Vettel, a rookie in his first full season for Red Bull’s junior team, Toro Rosso, or, once upon a time, Minardi.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vettel’s season had begun to pick up the pace with points in five of the previous eight races, after four straight DNFs and a 17th to start the season. He had also shown his wet weather prowess with a fifth-place in Monaco, but on the flip-side, had been eliminated in a first lap collision at Silverstone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But as Massa and Hamilton fluffed their lines with sixth and a lowly 15th on the grid, Vettel truly announced himself in the most stunning way possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tHere’s Seb<\/p>\n
Vettel bagged a maiden career pole and, to this day, remains the youngest ever grand prix pole-sitter at 21 years, two months, 11 days, although Kimi Antonelli broke this for the 2025 Miami GP Sprint race.<\/p>\n
But Helmut Marko’s first true protege was not expected to stay there.<\/p>\n
Heikki Kovalainen in the second McLaren was second on the grid and the smart money on Saturday evening was that the Finn would claim a second F1 win and Vettel’s balloon would be burst.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even better for Red Bull’s second team, effectively running the 2007 RB3 repainted in Toro Rosso colours, Sebastien Bourdais was fourth on the grid.<\/p>\n
But then the race started, behind the safety car, as Bourdais’s afternoon was effectively over after a problem on the grid, with a rolling start getting the 53 laps underway.<\/p>\n
Vettel quickly answered as to whether he could weather the weather, pulling six seconds on Kovalainen in eight laps, and that was the last anyone saw of him that afternoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\t\u00a9 xpb.cc<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tRecords smashed<\/p>\n
In the end, Vettel would win by 12.5s from Kovalainen as Robert Kubica charged from 11th to nab a podium, with the average age being 23 years, 11 months and 16 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That was a record in itself until the Max Verstappen-Pierre Gasly-Carlos Sainz rostrum at the 2019 Brazilian GP of 23 years, eight months, 13 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Vettel had announced himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The world took notice of the then-youngest-ever driver to win a grand prix, in what was effectively a Minardi, and to this day, Vettel remains the second-youngest driver to claim P1, no prizes for guessing who took that record…<\/p>\n
Whilst Vettel basked in the glory of his win, another unique record was set, one that only he holds.<\/p>\n
Ferrari engines have, as of the 2025 Italian GP, won 249 grands prix, but the works Ferrari team have won 248.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vettel’s victory, with a customer Ferrari engine in the back, is the only time in the history of F1 where a non-works Ferrari-powered car has won a grand prix.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As for Massa and Hamilton, they trailed home sixth and seventh to reduce Hamilton’s points lead to one heading for the 800th world championship grand prix, F1’s first-ever night race in Singapore.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And that wouldn’t prove to be controversial and still rumbling on to this day, at all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You are Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa, heading to the 2008 Italian Grand Prix, locked in a fierce…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,827,817,830,828,831,829,826,813,816,823,825,824,822,85],"class_list":["post-142611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}