Lewis Hamilton victorious in Monza; Raikkonen ruins start

Lewis Hamilton has won the Italian Grand Prix for Mercedes ahead of Sebastian Vettel who chased the Brit down to finish 2nd. Kimi Raikkonen, after a brilliant qualifying in his Ferrari, which put the Finn on the front row in 2nd next to the reigning world Champion, was not able to capitalise on his earlier efforts.

At the most historic track on the calendar, Monza has never been a disappointing race for spectators. The track has always put on a show ever since the first Grand prix was held at the track. When the lights went out, the crowd and the entire world was left stunned as Kimi Raikkonen who had almost all the bets in the world that he could take the race to Hamilton, messed up his start and was left as a sitting duck as the entire grid went past him.

Raikkonen went off the line stone dead last. Vettel pushed as hard as he could to stay as close as he could to Hamilton’s Mercedes. Hamilton stayed in the lead from the lights to the flag. Vettel kept his place for the entire duration of the race as well.

Hamilton’s team mate Nico Rosberg fell down the grid to manage to gain back to 5th place behind the two Williams of Massa and Bottas. Rosberg fought his way along the race to climb to 3rd right up to the 50th lap of the race. Rosberg who was forced to use the old spec engine compared to Hamilton’s new, just blew up and forced the German out of the race just a few laps to the finish, which would have been the last podium spot.

This left the Williams of Felipe Massa to fight for his 3rd spot to the chequered flag against fellow team mate Valtteri Bottas who came in 4th.

Kimi Raikkonen who was last at the start of the race, drove brilliantly and showed what the Iceman is truly made of when he fought his way through the pack, all the way to finish 5th. At the end, the Finn was battling with Marcus Ericsson’s Sauber and the Force India’s of Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez.

Perez finished in 6th ahead of Hulkenberg, Ricciardo, and Ericsson who finished 7th, 8th and 9th respectively. Daniil Kvyat took the final championship point of the race with a 10th place finish.

Both Lotus cars retired early on in the race and McLaren’s woes still haunt them as Fernando Alonso started facing problems on lap 50.

The Singapore Grand Prix is the next race on the 2015 Formula 1 calendar. The race weekend will be held under floodlights from September 18-20.