Hamilton wins as Pérez impresses

F1 Grand Prix, GP Italy, Autodromo Nazionale di Monza

Lewis Hamilton has dominantly won the Italian GP, leading the Grand Prix for nearly the entire distance. Sergio Pérez in the Sauber finished in a brilliant second place with an impressive second half of the race. Fernando Alonso is third, having started from 10th position.

At the start of the Italian GP, the weather is great as usual, with 27°C ambient and 37°C ambient. Hamilton is on pole, ahead of Button, Massa, Schumacher and Vettel. Championship leader Fernando Alonso is 10th after suffering a technical issue during qualifying, a problem that Ferrari have resolved by replacing the entire rear heave bar system on the Spaniard's car #5.

As the lights went out, Hamilton easily kept the lead and pulled Massa in his slipstream, allowing the Ferrari to move up to second place, ahead of Jenson Button. Alonso made a decent start as well and moved up 8th before the first corner. By the time the cars made it to the finish line, the Spaniard also passed Kobayashi, and 2 turns later Raikkonen was also passed.

Schumacher retained 4th and Vettel 5th.

At the back of the field, Hulkenberg started from 24th and moved up 6 places after only 2 laps.

At the start of lap 4, Vettel gets past Michael Schumacher, leaving the German in danger for a passing attempt by Alonso.

The gaps throughout the entire field however are still relatively small which means that nearly everybody is able to deploy DRS, negating the advantage it would give to attempt a pass.

In the approach to turn 1 on lap 7, Alonso passes Schumacher mainly thanks to a much better drive out of parabolica.

One lap earlier, Senna attempts to pass Rosberg through the outside, but the German had none of that and pushed Senna off the track, nearly spinning himself. 2 laps later, Senna tried to pass Di Resta at Roggia, again being on the outside of the turn during braking. Di Resta however fiercely moved to the right while Senna had his left front wheel aside of the right rear of the Force India car. Senna moved onto the grass and straight on through the chicane, rejoining the track just behind Webber in 12th position.

In lap 9 Vergne suddenly locked his rear wheels into the braking of turn 1, spinning off and slightly lifting off the ground before coming to a halt in the grass. The Frenchman was fortunately unhurt.

By lap 12 it is clear that Schumacher is starting to suffer with his tyres. He's consistently sliding through Roggia and has Raikkonen and Pérez closely behind him.

On lap 13 Maldonado is the first to make a stop.

At the front, Hamilton has 4.3 seconds on Massa. Then 1.5 to Button, 1.4 to Vettel, 1.7 to Alonso and 4.2 to Schumacher.

On lap 14 Rosberg stops, followed by Schumacher one lap later. The German rejoins the track in 15th position, ahead of Kovalainen and 3.2 seconds down on D'Ambrosio.

On lap 17, Pérez passes Raikkonen through the outside of Roggia while Mark Webber passes the other Sauber to move up to 8th.

2 laps later Massa is passed by Button for P2. After a failed attempt through turn 1, Button got the upper hand through Roggia. At the end of that lap, Massa pits and takes on a set of hard tyres.

On lap 21 Vettel and Alonso make their stops at the exact same moment. Alonso clearly had the better pitstop, allowing him to rejoin the track a few meters behind the Red Bull. The two are right behind Ricciardo and Massa.

One lap later, Massa passes the Toro Rosso, but at Roggia Ricciardo attempted to re-pass, backing up Vettel and Alonso. Both however manage to get past without trouble, just like with Senna another lap later.

Meanwhile both McLarens pitted on laps 23 and 24. Hamilton had the better stop, hence their relative positions clearly stayed the same. This leaves Pérez in the lead, having not stopped yet.

On lap 26, Alonso gets aside of Vettel on the high speed righthander in between turn 2 and 4, but as Vettel moved to the outside, Alonso had no choice but move through the grass and gravel at more than 250 km/h. It surely was a scary moment but the Spaniard managed to rejoin the track without damage to his car. He lost a few seconds to Vettel but rejoined within the next two laps.

Behind this battle for 5th is Schumacher in 7th and Raikkonen in 8th.

On lap 29 Hamilton takes the lead back as he passes Pérez in turn 1. At the same time, Button posts the fastest lap and Alonso gets past Vettel on the exit of turn 1, in the same area where he went through the grass 3 laps earlier.

On lap 30 Pérez finally pitted, rejoining the track in 8th place, just ahead of Rosberg. This also means that at this time, from the top 12 runners only Pérez is running on the medium tyres with everybody else doing their second stint on the hard, silver striped Pirellis.

In lap 32, the race stewards decided to hand Vettel a drive through penalty for forcing a a driver off track. While such decision can be defended, it is perhaps a little harsh if what happened was simply because Vettel did not see the Ferrari. In equal fashion, it is strange to see how Di Resta did not get a penalty for forcing Senna off the track.

In lap 34 Button is aside of the drive and has lost drive. He is notified by his team that there is a fuel pickup problem.

After serving his drive-through, Vettel got past his teammate to move up to positon 6.

Alonso then passes Massa for P2 on lap 40, but the real threat now for the Ferrari cars is now Pérez. The Mexican Sauber driver is closing in on them. On lap 43, Alonso is 1.5 seconds ahead of Massa, while Pérez is just 2.5 behind the Brazilian.

One lap later Pérez overtakes Massa with extreme ease through Parabolica and is now in the hunt for Alonso who is just 2 seconds ahead. Pérez however continues setting fastest laps and with DRS enabled he should have enough ammunition to take second.

In lap 47 the inevitable happens and Pérez easily dives on the inside of Alonso into the braking zone of Pérez.

At the same time the Mercedes cars are going pretty well too with both Rosberg and Schumacher moving up through the field.

In lap 48 Vettel is sidelined with a car problem and therefore abandons the race. 3 laps later Webber is also out of the race. At first he nearly spun on the exit of Ascari, but then continued slowly with half the throttle opened to return to the pits and end his race.

Hamilton meanwhile wins this Italian GP, 5 seconds ahead of Sergio Pérez. Alonso is third and extends his lead in the championship.