Mercedes losing was a victory for Formula 1, team boss Toto Wolff admitted after the Italian Grand Prix.
Once again, Lewis Hamilton appeared destined for an easy win at Monza as he pulled out a comfortable margin over the two McLaren’s in the first half of the race.
However, a mid-race penalty for pitting when the lane was closed under the Safety Car dropped the Briton out of contention and paved the way for Pierre Gasly and Carlos Sainz to battle for an unexpected win, with the Frenchman coming out on top.
“This is a loss for Mercedes and the big teams, but it’s a victory for the sport,” Wolff said in his post-race remarks.
“That was great entertainment today and it was fantastic to see the young guys fighting out front. Congratulations to Pierre and AlphaTauri, they deserved the win.
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“It was obviously a disappointing race for us,” he added.
“With Lewis and the penalty, it was a weird sequence of events. We should have spotted earlier that the pit lane was closed, by the time that we did, the car was entering the pit lane.
“It’s a tough result to take but we must take it on the chin. The recovery drive that Lewis did was very good. It is difficult to overtake in Monza, particularly now with the new Technical Directive on engine modes, so with that in mind, to recover to P7 was very strong.”
There was, however, one point of concern and that was Valtteri Bottas who dropped to sixth on the opening lap and could have finished much lower than P5 had he not jumped two cars in the pit-stop phase.
“On Valtteri’s side, we need to see what happened with the car, as it wasn’t turning well into the right-handers and that was making it hard for him to make progress,” Wolff explained.
“We were also marginal on cooling, which made things even tougher for him out there.
“We’ll take all the learnings we can from this weekend and come back fighting in Mugello,” he concluded.