italian grand prix

Well, that was a lot better than I was expecting.

I have to confess I wasn't really looking forward to Monza as my memory of it is as a circuit where it's very difficult to overtake, but that didn't appear to be the case this weekend as there was a lot of action on the track.  Indeed it also seemed to disprove what I was saying about the DRS, but that wasn't quite as it might have appeared.

Basically because Monza is so high speed (I think it only has about 6 corners!) they all use a special low-down force package, and of course that means the rear wing is quite skinny.  As such the DRS (which basically opens a hole in the rear wing to reduce its drag) doesn't have a huge impact.  That means it generally allowed them to get into overtaking position without just driving past.

I mean, that wasn't always the case - there were some drive pasts, but even these weren't as daft as they were at Spa, for example, with the drivers able to defend a bit and then fight back at the next corner.

Unfortunately it was also a bit of a weird weekend.

Riciardo was confirmed as Webber's replacement at Red Bull, but the whole rest of driver situation is quite messy.  It seems like Raikonen is likely to go back to Ferrari, and Alonso wasn't happy.  Well, the feeling was that that was a big part of why Alonso wasn't happy.  He could easily have been unhappy at how the weekend went generally.

It's odd - the Mercedes has generally qualified well this season and then gone backwards on race day, where the Ferrari seems to qualify poorly then do really well during the race.  Reliability issues aside, I think Alonso has always finished some way above where he qualified.

And mentioning Mercedes, they had a bit of a shocker.  Hamilton said he made a mess of qualifying, but I think that was overly harsh.  Rosberg didn't actually do that much better, it was more that Hamilton messed up his quick laps in 2nd qualifying.

However, his radio then failed during the race, so he couldn't hear them calling him in for his pit stops, for example.  He did make up a couple of spots, taking him into the points, but it was clear he felt he could & should have done a lot better across the weekend.

I have to say it now looks like Vettel is going to take the driver's championship as the others just haven't been able to deliver a consistent challenge.