Winners and losers from F1's controversial 2025 Italian GP

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Mark Thompson – Getty Images

In Budapest, right before the summer break, Max Verstappen said his Red Bull team wouldn’t win any more races this year after the drubbing it received in the Hungarian GP.

That win certainly wasn’t going to come at high-speed Monza, the scene of its worst performance of last season.

Yet here we are. And there he is. On the top step of the podium, after putting on a clinic. Verstappen defeated the McLarens to pole, lost his lead to Norris but then simply snatched it back with a textbook Monza Turn 1 pass.

You would have still given Norris a reasonable chance to get an undercut work, but Verstappen turned out to have the best race pace, too, and slowly but surely disappeared from sight.

Quite how Red Bull managed to get there seems to be a complex puzzle, but it’s clear the team has changed its set-up philosophy and is now starting to reap the rewards. Dare we say the result is also a shot in the arm for technical director Pierre Wache, who had the honour of joining Verstappen on the podium and was starting to come under pressure after the team’s slide in performance.

Loser: McLaren
Lando Norris, McLaren

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images

At Monza, McLaren walked a very fine line between being fair and intervening in normal racing situations when it ordered Oscar Piastri to let Lando Norris past after a slow stop for the Briton.

Yes, there are parallels to be made with the reverse scenario in Hungary last year, when Norris had to cede the win to Piastri. Contrary to normal convention, the second driver in the queue was allowed to pit before the first to protect against a threat from behind, causing a window of opportunity for an undercut. And that was only allowed to happen with the outspoken and pre-briefed understanding that any such accidental position change would be undone on track.

But this isn’t a one-to-one comparison. At Monza, Norris didn’t lose the position due to the undercut itself, but it was largely the three-second delay caused by a slow front-left tyre change that did the real damage.

It’s the latest example of how even-handed McLaren is trying to be as its drivers are battling for the world title, the first time the team has found itself in this position in this era. Is McLaren almost being fair to its drivers to a fault, in the name of the values of how it goes racing?

Are slow pit stops not also part of racing?

Gabriel Bortoleto, Sauber

Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images

What else to say about Gabriel Bortoleto? His teammate Nico Hulkenberg is known as a qualifying ace, and he has been beaten by the Brazilian rookie in the last seven qualifying sessions – including Belgium’s sprint qualifying.

Bortoleto has only qualified behind the German twice since Miami, by less than a tenth in each case, and is showing Audi that banking on youth doesn’t have to come at a price in the short-term, as long as it’s the right talent you are picking for the right reasons.

From seventh on the grid Bortoleto finished eighth after a very solid afternoon, being powerless to defend against Lewis Hamilton‘s Ferrari, while Alex Albon also came through in a superior Williams after qualifying out of position.

Amid all the (justified) hype around Isack Hadjar, is Bortoleto being overlooked for the rookie of the year honours?

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

We regret to inform you Fernando Alonso’s race-destroying cartoon anvil has returned with a vengeance. The object in question has been seen circling around the Spaniard’s AMR25 during the opening quarter of 2025 and reappeared in Monza, striking just as he innocently took the exit kerb at Ascari, his front-right suspension imploding under the oscillation.

It really is rotten luck for Alonso after parking his car in Q3 on what was supposed to be a terrible circuit for the squad, allowing him to fight out another fun duel with his impressive protege, Bortoleto.

Good thing the two-time world champion focus has long been on 2026, and so has his team’s. But the born racer couldn’t conceal his utter despair at his lack of fortune at Monza.

Williams really keeps finding ways to make life difficult for itself on Saturdays, as its struggles to keep the Pirelli tyres in the required operation window. This deficit sees the Grove-based squad qualify out of position more often than not.

But Williams, and Albon in particular, was really quick on Sunday and validated Williams’ call to swap positions with team-mate Carlos Sainz.

Albon’s latest points haul in seventh sees him overtake Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli for seventh in the drivers’ championship. That says something about Antonelli’s season – more on that shortly – but just as much about the rich vein of form Albon is hitting in his finest season to date.

Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls Team, Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing Team

Photo by: Joe Portlock / LAT Images via Getty Images

You are not going to find many people in the F1 paddock who still believe Yuki Tsunoda stands a chance to save his Red Bull seat for next year. Even if Red Bull is under no pressure to make a call before its self-imposed end of October deadline, it would take quite a turn of events for the momentum to swing back from Isack Hadjar to the Japanese driver.

That hasn’t changed after a race in which Hadjar drove from the pitlane to score a point, while Tsunoda started in the points and had a disastrous afternoon to finish near the back of the field. Tsunoda was behind on floor specification again in Monza, which did not help matters, and his Q2 was promising enough – just two tenths behind Verstappen.

But by qualifying in the middle of the pack again, Tsunoda opened himself up to all sorts of external grief – the first being stuck in traffic to blunt his race pace and the second being involved in a tussle with Liam Lawson that cost Tsunoda considerable floor damage.

Another race goes by that won’t have swung Red Bull’s opinion on what to do next.

Winner: Isack Hadjar
Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls Team

Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls Team

Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Getty Images

On a related topic, Hadjar showed a different side to his game by taking the Racing Bulls machine from a pitlane start to tenth, having been forced into an engine change under parc ferme.

Starting on hard tyres, Hadjar waited until he found clean air, patiently keeping it clean while others around him clashed, which saw him rewarded with a point in a 75-minute race with no safety cars.

The only blot on the Frenchman’s weekend was an off-kilter qualifying session that saw him knocked out in 16th, but as Hadjar already knew before the session he would start from the pitlane, it was not that relevant or consequential. If anything, a useful and free lesson for the future.

Loser: Andrea Kimi Antonelli
George Russell, Mercedes, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

George Russell, Mercedes, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

Toto Wolff called Antonelli’s Monza weekend “underwhelming”, the sternest language he has yet used to describe his protege’s rookie blues.

Before this weekend, we advocated for Antonelli being given latitude to get all his rookie errors out of the way, as this sort of character-building season is exactly what he needs to develop into a mature F1 driver.

We still stand by that after another error-strewn weekend, with a slip up in FP3, a poor start, and a penalty for erratic driving after dangerously shoving Albon onto the grass at the high-speed Curva Grande.

It sure would be nice for all involved to now see the 19-year-old start building some momentum. That begins by having clean weekends and banishing the demons from the mistakes that came before.

Undecided: Ferrari
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Jayce Illman / Getty Images

Was Ferrari’s weekend kind of good or kind of bad? It’s hard to decide. The Scuderia was simply lacking that little bit of juice to race Verstappen and the McLaren, but limited the damage with fourth for an amped up Charles Leclerc and sixth for a lively-looking Lewis Hamilton, who drew cheers from the tifosi every time he overtook a car into Turn 1. The press may have slammed the seven-time world champion, but the fans still appear on his side.

Questions remain over its slipstreaming strategy in qualifying. And not being on the podium on home soil – while it won the race 12 months ago – can never be a result Italy will be able to live with. Let’s see what the all the gazzetta headlines say on Monday.

Photos from Italian GP – Race

Italian GP – Sunday, in photos

Winners and losers from F1’s controversial 2025 Italian GP

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