Lewis Hamilton may have owned qualifying at the Italian Grand Prix, but he totally screwed the pooch at the start of the race. Mailed it in. Fell asleep. Something. (Something not good.)
Cars passed the slow-starting No. 44 Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton like it was standing still. Too much wheelspin off the line left Hamilton a sitting duck. Hamilton was left to claw his way back from sixth place, allowing his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg to shoot ahead of the field.
According to team boss Toto Wolff, Hamilton later admitted that he made a mistake. But by then, he was going to have to work extra hard to salvage Mercedes’ all too predictable 1-2 finish.
Hamilton finished second place anyway, because of course he did. There was a brief scare where Hamilton ran into the runoff while trying to push and catch up to Rosberg, but the cars were spread far enough apart by then that the off didn’t matter.
Nico Rosberg cruised home to his first-ever Italian Grand Prix win, meaning that he sits only two points behind Hamilton in the world driver’s championship. The Tifosi-heavy home crowd has someone to cheer for if they’re still awake, however—Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel came in third.