Hamilton leads Mercedes 1-2 in Italy

F1 Grand Prix, GP Italy, Autodromo Nazionale di Monza

Lewis Hamilton took the win at the Italian Grand Prix, recovering from a troubled start that saw him fall back to fourth after the first lap. Nico Rosberg finished in second place while former Ferrari driver Felipe Massa takes his first ever podium for Williams.

As the lights went out, Nico Rosberg took the best start and decisively took the lead of the race. Lewis Hamilton had a difficult start and ended up in fourth. Magnussen made an extremely strong start to move up from 5th to 2nd, ahead of Massa.

Vettel is 5th after lap 2, followed by Button, Alonso, Perez, Hulkenberg, Raikkonen, Bottas, Ricciardo, Vergne, Maldonado, Sutil, Gutierrez, Kobayashi, Kvyat, Bianchi, Grosjean, Chilton and Ericsson.

On lap 5, a heating battle for second place soon saw Massa get past Magnussen in Roggia, with Hamilton following through ahead of the first Lesmo. One lap later, Bottas also gains a position on the start finish straight, starting his recovery following a dismal start that saw him drop from 3rd on the grid to 11th at the end of the first lap.

On lap 7, Chilton gets over the sausage kerbs on the inside of the right hand curve of Roggia, launching his car in the air and ending up in the gravel trap. It's the end for his race.

As of passing Magnussen on lap 5, Massa and Hamilton picked up the pace considerably, going slightly faster than Rosberg each lap, and a second a lap quicker than Magnussen. On lap 9, Rosberg missed the braking for turn one and had to shortcut the chicane, reducing his advantage from 3.6 to 2 seconds. Another lap later Hamilton gets past Massa by going round the outside of the first corner.

Hamilton immediately went on to post the fastest lap, reducing Rosberg's advantage to 2.2s after losing a little bit by passing Massa.

Further back, Bottas is really the only driver who manages to gain any ground. He managed to pass Raikkonen and then went on to join the pack of Magnussen, Vettel, Button, Alonso and Perez. Those 5 do not appear to have the possibility to overtake any car ahead, despite all having the avialability of DRS.

At the start of lap 14, Bottas takes Perez and moves on to chase Alonso. Another 2 laps later Bottas easily passes the Ferrari, similarly as with Perez getting past the car ahead of him even before the braking point of turn 1. Again, two laps later, Bottas seals the same fate for Button.

On lap 19, Vettel is the first map to stop for new tyres. He takes onthe hard tyes and rejoins in 15th on a stretch of clear track. Perez followed suit but had a slow stop, getting back on track 2.5s down on Vettel.

On lap 21 Bottas gets past Magnussen and is back in fourth, almost entirely gaining back what he lost during the start.

Magnussen and Alonso stopped one lap later. MAG returned to the track just behind Vettel, hence losing a position to the Red Bull driver while Alonso rejoined the track behind Perez, similarly losing a place relative to Perez who was just behind him before the stops. Button stopped another lap later and also lost out to Perez but kept ahead of Alonso.

On lap 24, Massa pits. Rosberg followed one lap later, along with Bottas. The Finnish Williams driver paid the price for that late stop, losing out to Vettel, Perez and Magnussen.

Hamilton pits one lap after Rosberg and rejois the track just behind Rosberg, losing out 0.6 seconds. The gap is up to 1.8s.

On lap 27 Ricciardo is the last man to stop, he rejoins the track.

At the front, Hamilton appears to be more comfortably on the harder tyres, first taking 0.3s, before slicing 7 tenths off of Rosberg's advantage. Hamilton clearly ignored his engineer's advice to back off a bit and take on the fight at the end of the race. Rosberg subsequently missed his braking again for turn 1, simply handing the race lead to Lewis Hamilton, who went on so set another fastest lap to break his team mate out of the DRS distance.

One lap later, Alonso had his first technical DNF of the year, seeing his engine switch off at the end of the start finish straight due to an ERS failure.

Next came an impressive number of close battles between Bottas, Magnussen, Vettel, Ricciardo, Magnussen, Perez and Button. Bottas was the first man to get the action going, first passing Magnussen after several attempts that eventually earned Magnussen a 5s stop-and-go penalty for forcing Bottas off track during one of his defensive moves. Those 5s will be added to his race time at the end of the race.

Bottas moved on to easily pass Vettel. Next up was Button repeatedly got ahead of Perez, but the latter always fought back and eventually stayed ahead. Their fight though saw Ricciardo come back behind them and eventually pass the entire pack of cars, including Sebastian Vettel. Ricciardo showed unbelievably confident race craft in his passes on Perez and Vettel.

3 laps from the end, Gutierrez gets himself a rear puncture after weaving under braking for the first corner, cutting into the front wing of Grosjean. He made it back to the pits to change for new tyres. The incident is immediately under investigation by the stewards.

On the penultimate lap, Magnussen has move and more trouble to keep Perez, Button and Raikkonen behind.

Daniil Kvyat then had a hot moment by mising his braking in turn 1, narrowly avoiding a collision with Raikkonen. The youngster continued the race, albeit 6 seconds off the pace.

In the end, Hamilton kept the lead, finishing 3 seconds ahead of Rosberg. Felipe Massa got his first podium of the season while Bottas had a great race to recover from a dismal start, finishing 4th and securing another solid result for Williams.