Monza delivered exactly what fans wanted: speed, drama, and a sharp reminder that despite McLaren’s clear dominance, the season is not yet settled. Max Verstappen claimed a commanding win at Ferrari’s home race, while McLaren's team order between Piastri and Norris sparked controversy. Before the race week began, two pieces of news broke: Pierre Gasly signed a new Alpine contract, and the Monaco Grand Prix was extended to 2035. But the race was even more eventful — here’s a breakdown of what happened.

📊 Qualifying Highlights

As we saw last year, with minimum use of DRS, Monza is not an easy track to overtake on, which makes the Saturday Qualifying sessions thrilling to watch. Max Verstappen lit up the track with the fastest lap in the history of Formula 1, a pole time that doubled as a statement: you can never count the four-time World Champion out when he has a decent car.

Behind him, McLaren locked out the second row with Lando Norris edging Oscar Piastri by a small margin. Norris bounced back after a mechanical failure last week and looked like the stronger Papaya driver all weekend. But championship leader Piastri was never far away.

Home favorite Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton never looked like serious contenders for pole position. Leclerc squeezed into the second row in front of the Tifosi, and admitted there was no more he could have done in Q3. His teammate Hamilton took a 5-place grid penalty, which set him back in P10. The Mercedes duo of Russell and Antonelli was tucked behind Leclerc, and while Gabriel Bortoleto, Fernando Alonso, and Yuki Tsunoda rounded out the Top 10.

📝 The Fastest Race in The History of Formula 1

With the resurfacing of the track last year, the new asphalt in Monza has made the circuit much grippier than before. When Max Verstappen crossed the line on Sunday, it was officially the fastest Formula 1 race ever run, a record previously held by Michael Schumacher. Average speeds pushed north of 260 km/h, with Verstappen’s winning time clocking in at a staggering 1h 13m over 53 laps.

Tire degradation was almost nonexistent. Pirelli’s medium compounds barely blistered, allowing teams to stretch their first stints on well beyond projections. The one-stop was considered a gamble last year, but became the only option this weekend. This minimized the strategic variety but placed a premium on team execution: pit stop errors, traffic management, and in-lap decisions became the make-or-break elements. Next year, Pirelli will probably need to consider going a step softer with their compound choices.

The result? The cleanest, purest form of racing Monza has delivered in years—no safety cars, no weather disruptions, just flat-out speed. If you blinked, you missed it. And for Verstappen, that played directly into his hand.

🦁 Verstappen Masterclass Returns

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Max Verstappen winning a race from pole with a 20-second margin. It felt like 2023 all over again, only this time, even the Tifosis were cheering him on for his victory at their home turf.

The Redbull team brought a floor upgrade to Monza, which explains the boost in their performance. More importantly, the team decided to lean more into setting up the car based on Verstappen’s feedback over their previous approach, which relied heavily on simulator data. Between Free Practices and Qualifying, the four-time World Champion had a few disagreements with the team’s technical director, Pierre Waché. During FP3, Verstappen pushed the team to trim down his rear wing even further to reduce downforce.

The risk paid off as the four-time World Champion clinched a surprising pole on Saturday, and his race execution on Sunday was even more impressive. He lost the lead briefly after giving the position back to Norris for “leaving the track and gaining an advantage”, but by Lap 4, Verstappen had gotten back into P1 with a clinical move on his old title rival.

From there, he was untouchable, pumping in fastest lap after fastest lap, as the car got lighter every lap. By the time the checkered flag waved, he was nearly 20 seconds ahead of the nearest McLaren. The RB-21, which looked unmanageable in Budapest, suddenly came alive in Monza’s low-downforce setup.

“Unbelievable weekend,” Verstappen radioed after crossing the line. His Monza victory reminded the paddock what a champion looks like when things go his way. The race winner even enjoyed a moment of gossip for the chaos behind him, as he expressed his amusement towards the “Papaya Rules”.

⁉️ McLaren Team Order Controversy

Here’s where things got messy. Like, really messy. On paper, McLaren should have celebrated a P2–P3 finish, a strong haul of points to give them hope to secure the Constructors’ Championship by as early as the next race weekend. Instead, they walked away with a firestorm of controversy.

Track characteristics, combined with the MCL-39’s extraordinary ability to preserve tires, led to Norris and Piastri staying out for as long as they could, hoping for a last-minute safety car to challenge Verstappen. It started when Norris was offered to box first, as the lead driver on track, but he asked if they should box Piastri first to cover off Leclerc, who was not a threat. Norris told the team that, as long as he does not get undercut, Piastri can box first. But all it took was a painfully slow pit stop to drop Norris behind Piastri. Team orders soon followed: Piastri was asked to hand back the position, with the team framing it as a matter of fairness given the pit lane mishap. But this wasn’t just about track position; it was about the optics of a championship battle suddenly being refereed from the pit wall.

Piastri’s response was sharp: “A slow pit stop is part of racing.” The Australian driver obeyed the order, but this opens up a much bigger discussion. It sets precedents: What is considered fair by McLaren? How much should the team meddle with the fight? At what point should they stop issuing team orders? Surely, they will not do this in Abu Dhabi if the fight comes down to the last race, right?

For Norris, he was the better driver this weekend and probably deserved P2 on merit. And for Piastri, it may feel like the team just robbed him of a cleaner, stronger claim to the championship lead. Would he use his action on track today to justify anything in the future? With the drama this weekend, every team order from here on will be dissected, debated, and weaponized in the court of public opinion.

💨 Ferrari’s Disappointing Weekend

If you’re a Ferrari fan, Monza was more pain than passion. The team arrived with the weight of expectation, a special livery honoring Niki Lauda, and memories of Leclerc’s heroic one-stop victory last year. The Tifosi flooded the grandstands in red, hoping for magic. What they got instead was mediocrity.

Qualifying itself became a bit of a soap opera. With Lewis Hamilton serving a grid penalty, speculation grew about whether Ferrari would order him to give Leclerc a tow in Q3. The seven-time World Champion was not opposed to the idea on Media Day, but in the end, Hamilton was on his own run plan, and Leclerc could only manage to P4. In his post-qualifying interviews, Hamilton said to the media that he had to salvage what was left with his penalty.

Leclerc’s P4 finish on Sunday was respectable but nothing special. The car was fast on the straights, but painful to watch in the corners. Despite his early efforts to pass Piastri, he never truly challenged the McLarens or Verstappen. Hamilton made a few crucial overtakes and recovered to P6, but that was damage limitation, not the glory that the Tifosis hoped.

And then there’s the wider issue: Ferrari still hasn’t won a race this season. Team principal Fred Vasseur faces mounting pressure to deliver results, but the SF-25 simply doesn’t have the consistency to fight at the very top. At a track where Ferrari must deliver, they didn’t. And that, perhaps, hurts more than a single lost race—it speaks to a season where promise keeps fading into disappointment.

🎖️ Winners & Losers

🏆 Winners:

Max Verstappen – A perfect weekend for the reigning world champion: pole to a dominant win.

Alex Albon – From P14 to P7, secured big points for Williams to help in the Constructors’ campaign.
Gabriel Bortoleto – Consistently out-qualifying his teammate, held off the pack, and got another points finish.
Isack Hadjar – Benefited from the Sainz-Bearman incident, started from the pitlane but recovered in the points.

❌ Losers:

McLaren – Crazy to say a 2-3 finish is counted as a loss for a team, and yet here we are. The team order fiasco created too much chatter around the championship fight.
Ferrari – Despite the drivers’ efforts, the car was simply not competitive enough in the long run in front of the Tifosis.
Yuki Tsunoda - Qualified reasonably well but suffered from damage after contact with Liam Lawson that ruined his race.
Carlos Sainz - Involved in another incident on track and was nowhere in the second stint.
Aston Martin – Coming from a great weekend in Zandvoort, Aston Martin struggled in Monza. Fernando Alonso had to retire the car, and Lance Stroll sat through a 17-second pitstop.
Oliver Bearman – Incident with Carlos Sainz got him a 10-second penalty (but was he really the one to blame?) and 2 points on his Super License — the Briton is now just 2 points away from a race ban.

🇦🇿 Looking Ahead: Azerbaijan

If Monza were about raw speed, Baku would be about survival. Last year, Leclerc got his fourth consecutive pole at this circuit, Piastri took his second career victory after the controversial one in Hungary, and Russell stepped on the Podium, benefiting from the collision between Sainz and Perez.

McLaren enters with a headache. Piastri is still in a comfortable lead, but after the team order fiasco in Italy, how they manage intra-team dynamics in Baku will be just as important as outright pace. Expect plenty of chatter on the pit wall about whether “fairness” should take precedence over everything that can happen during a race.

Baku rarely delivers a dull race. Expect fireworks, controversy, and maybe, just maybe, a shake-up in the title fight.

Max Verstappen Victory, McLaren Team Orders, and Ferrari Disappointment: What Happened at The 2025 Italian Grand Prix