Lewis Hamilton “still not 100% comfortable”, so top three is “off the cards”

Lewis Hamilton reckoned he could have finished fifth rather than sixth in Formula 1’s Italian Grand Prix, which in itself was a respectable return given the contentious five-place grid penalty he carried over from Zandvoort.

Hamilton started 10th and had to make his way past the Red Bull of Yuki Tsunoda on the opening lap – with a move the Japanese driver complained was excessively forceful – then Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin and Gabriel Bortoleto’s Sauber to reach sixth place behind Mercedes’ George Russell on the seventh lap.

Russell’s team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who started sixth, had made a poor start and fallen out of contention on the opening tour.

But Ferrari didn’t bite at the opportunity to respond to or pre-empt Russell’s stop at the end of lap 27, leaving Hamilton out another 11 laps before bringing him in for hard-compound Pirellis. So not only was there no undercut, Hamilton emerged behind Esteban Ocon and Lance Stroll, who were extending their first stints even further.

He was just under five seconds off fifth-placed Russell at the flag while team-mate Charles Leclerc was fourth, four seconds behind Oscar Piastri’s McLaren.

“I think overall our performance was fairly decent,” said Hamilton after the race.

“We obviously don’t have the pace of the cars much further ahead, so competing for the top three is off the cards for a while, but we keep pushing and trying to extract more.

“This weekend built a lot on my confidence with the car, [but] definitely I’m still not 100% comfortable in the car.”

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images

On the face of it this reads like a capitulation, and a counter-intuitive one at that, since Leclerc qualified fourth and even passed Piastri for third place twice during the opening laps. But actually this was a question of Leclerc trying to hang on after an excellent qualifying performance.

“I knew my first lap – I hate to say perfect and I don’t think anyone ever does a perfect lap – but I think it was as close as what I would want to do during a qualifying lap,” Leclerc had said about his Q3 performance.

“I knew it would be difficult to beat that attempt on the second timed lap. Which I didn’t.”

Leclerc had driven out of his skin to get close to the two McLarens and the solitary Red Bull but was always going to struggle in the race. As the podium finishers watched highlights of those opening laps in the ‘green room’ before the ceremonials, Piastri could clearly be heard saying that Leclerc’s Ferrari was quick on the straights but slow through the corners, making his job of retaking third place easier.

Leclerc was also overheating his tyres in those early laps, forcing him to back off, which briefly made Russell a threat.

Judging downforce levels at Monza is a subtle art because the effect of the slipstream is so powerful. It’s easy to get greedy and end up losing performance in the corners – certainly both Ferrari drivers were flirting with disaster quite often as they tried to carry high speeds through the Lesmos.

McLaren’s decision to extend both its drivers’ first stints so as to take soft tyres for the final laps failed to work on all levels, giving both drivers too much work to do and leaving Piastri potentially vulnerable to Leclerc. The soft tyres did not yield the performance uplift expected, flattering the gap between third and fourth.

“I’m sure we didn’t have the pace of the McLarens and the Red Bulls,” said Hamilton.

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

“But I definitely think Charles and I, if we were together, we could have had a strong race in perhaps keeping up with, maybe trying to keep up more with the guys further ahead.

“I really don’t know. I just think they were just too fast, the guys further ahead, but I definitely think we would have been fifth, fourth.

“I had a really good start – I had to lift just after because it was such a good start – and then I got kind of squeezed in between two cars. But other than that I positioned the car really nicely and I think made my way forwards, and I think I could have got fifth today.

“I think I was 1.5 seconds behind George, we should have tried to undercut him. But we missed that opportunity, then I was miles behind after that.”

Team boss Frederic Vasseur put a more positive gloss on the weekend, pointing out the narrowness of the gap between Ferrari and McLaren compared with other races earlier in the season – but it was still “not enough” to “bring a podium to the tifosi”.