Gasly wins topsy-turvy Italian GP

– France’s Pierre Gasly (right) won an astonishing Italian Grand Prix thriller for Italy-based AlphaTauri yesterday in a topsy-turvy race packed with suspense and none of the usual top teams on the podium.

McLaren’s Spaniard Carlos Sainz finished a close second at Monza after a nail-biting chase to the flag, with Racing Point’s Lance Stroll third on a podium of youngsters.

The race had to be stopped at the halfway mark after Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc crashed heavily into the tyre wall at Parabolica.

Mercedes’s championship leader Lewis Hamilton finished seventh after starting on pole and dropping to last following a 10-second stop-go penalty for entering the pit lane under a red light while leading.

Despite the setback, the sixtime world champion retained his 47-point lead at the top over team mate Valtteri Bottas, who was fifth, after Red Bull’s Max Verstappen retired.

Hamilton has 164 points after eight races to Bottas’s 117 and Verstappen’s 110.

It was the first time since 2013, when Kimi Raikkonen triumphed with Lotus in Australia, that a team other than Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull had won a race.

“It’s unbelievable,” gasped Gasly, who was dropped by Red Bull’s main team last year but has come on in strides in the strangest of seasons disrupted by Covid-19 and without spectators. “It was such a crazy race and we capitalised on it.

“I’ve been through so much in 18 months, I struggle to realise this.”

The victory was a first in F1 for Gasly, the first for a French driver since Olivier Panis in 1996 and the second for the former Toro Rosso team whose only other win was also at Monza with Sebastian Vettel in 2008. –