2021 Italian Grand Prix News
There’s no doubt, the Italian Grand Prix belonged to McLaren and Daniel Ricciardo in 2021. Both team and driver broke Formula One win droughts that had lasted far longer than either of them would have liked. Read on as Laura Leslie takes you through the best stats from a wild weekend in Monza.
3213. That’s how many days McLaren had to wait between winning the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix and the 2021 Italian Grand Prix. At 8 years, 9 months and 18 days it was the sixth longest gap between two wins for a constructor in F1 history. Only Ligier – 14 years, 7 months and 22 days - had gone longer without a win with period out of F1 in between. McLaren’s wait for a 1-2 finish was even longer as it hadn’t done so since the 2010 Canadian Grand Prix a whopping 218 races ago.
For Daniel Ricciardo the wait wasn’t as excruciating as McLaren’s, but it was a still painful 1204 days since he won the 2018 Monaco Grand Prix. It was only Ricciardo’s fourth podium finish since that particular win and his first as a McLaren driver. Team-mate Lando Norris secured his best ever F1 finish with second, helping McLaren become the only team to score a 1-2 finish in 2021 so far.
The result meant McLaren scored a weekend total of 45 points – 27 from Ricciardo following third in the F1Sprint and the extra points for fastest lap, 18 from Norris. This is the third highest points total a team has ever came out of an F1 weekend with. At the end of the 2014 season double points were awarded in Abu Dhabi with Mercedes scoring a total of 50 points and Williams scoring 66 points. This means no team has ever scored more points in a non-double points weekend than McLaren at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.
Behind the McLaren’s finished the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas. After winning the F1Sprint, Bottas had to start the race from the back of the grid in 19th following a full power unit change. The Finn flew up the order and gained a total of 16 places, the most in one race since the 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix by Bottas himself.
Bottas’ team-mate Lewis Hamilton failed to score any points for the second time in 2021 thanks to a clash with title rival Max Verstappen at the Rettifilo chicane. It was a case of history repeating itself in more ways than one. Hamilton and Verstappen had already come to blows this year at Silverstone, repeating what 1995 title rivals Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher had done. Hill and Schumacher also went on to clash in Monza that season too. Verstappen leads Hamilton by 5 points, an extension of two owed to his second place in the F1Sprint.
Williams and George Russell made it a third points score in the past four races. Russell now sits just three points behind Alpha Tauri’s Yuki Tsunoda in the standings. Tsunoda has endured a tough season which was made harder by a DNS in Monza. Williams are now 19 points clear of Alfa Romeo in the constructors’ championship with eight races left to run.
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