Mercedes
Russell had a steady race in Italy, working his way back to Leclerc and trying to challenge the Ferrari in the first stint. But he pitted before his rival and came out in traffic and that cost him any chance of continuing that battle. As for Antonelli, a dreadful start dropped him down the order. He fought back up through the pack with some decent overtakes, but then it all went wrong when he was battling Albon for seventh. The stewards deemed that Antonelli had forced his rival off the track, and he picked up a time penalty that dropped him from P8 to P9 at the flag. Still, he managed to score at home and had his best finish since his podium in Canada back in June.
George Russell, 5th
“P5 was likely the maximum we could have achieved today given our pace and our starting position. I was reasonably pleased in the early stages to be fighting the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc ahead. We thought they would have a bit of an advantage over us, but we were within DRS range of him for a while. Unfortunately, even with DRS, overtaking is incredibly difficult here and we couldn’t mount an attack.
“It is a shame that we leave here having lost a little bit of ground to Ferrari in the Constructors’. That said, it could have been worse, and we go into these final eight races with a good chance of taking second in the final standings. We will regroup now in the next week and look to perform well in Baku.”
Kimi Antonelli, 9th
“That wasn’t the Italian Grand Prix we were hoping for. I had a bad start with too much wheelspin. I lost a lot of places and that obviously really compromised my race unfortunately. It was a shame as my pace on the Medium tyre once I was in clear air was good. In the closing stages, I was trying to defend from Albon but unfortunately picked up a penalty. That dropped me one more position at the flag which is frustrating.
“There are positives we can take from the weekend still. I took a step forward in Qualifying and my feeling with the car was good. Hopefully we can get into a better rhythm on these weekends, starting in Baku, and that will enable us to show exactly what we can do when performing at our optimum.”
Toto Wolff, Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
“That was a tough day for us today. We didn’t have the pace to challenge for the podium and that is frustrating. The weekend as a whole slipped away from us a little, despite it looking promising as we headed into Qualifying. We didn’t perform as we needed to in order to fight for the top three and that is something we all need to improve on. There is never one reason that we can blame for that, so we will work hard in the days ahead of Baku to make sure we perform better in Azerbaijan.
“We now have just eight races to go until the end of the season. We are in a fight with Ferrari and Red Bull for second in the Constructors’ and will need to be at our best if we want to come out ahead of them. It will be a real dog fight given everyone’s development focus is already on 2026 so it will all be about who can execute better than their competitors.”
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director
“That was a frustrating Italian Grand Prix for us. George was able to put some pressure on Charles early on but, even with DRS, we just didn’t have the straight-line speed to be able to pass. His race from there was about controlling the gap to the other Ferrari of Lewis behind. We were able to time our stop well to avoid losing position, but we had too much degradation on that stint to be able to challenge Charles ahead. Once that stop was out of the way it was an uneventful run for George to a P5 finish.
“For Kimi, his race came undone when excessive wheelspin on the launch led to a slow start. He dropped to P10 and had to battle back from there. He deployed his pace on the Medium compound well to complete the overcut on several of the cars he was racing, but traffic in his second stint left him vulnerable to the Williams of Alex Albon who had started on Hard and ran long. He duly made the pass despite Kimi’s best efforts, leaving him P8 at the flag. In defending from Albon, Kimi also picked up a time penalty that relegated him to P9 at the flag.”