Rosberg wins Italian GP after Hamilton’s poor start

Lewis Hamilton says the unpredictable feeling with the clutch system was the cause of his terrible start in the Italian Grand Prix which dropped him from first to sixth and ultimately cost him the chance of victory.

Nico Rosberg has won the Italian Grand Prix to cut Lewis Hamilton’s lead in the driver standings to just two points.

Hamilton had a disappointing start despite the pole position, only to see Rosberg lead past, followed by a fast Vettel into Turn 1.

The Brit, who was seeking to re-assert his dominance over his Mercedes teammate and rival Nice Rosberg in qualifying, posted the best time of 1 minute and 21.135 seconds to take top spot on Saturday.

The 31-year-old began to claw his way back up towards first place and after the Mercedes pair had come back out from their pit-stop, the gap had been reduced to 9.1secs.

With seven races of the 2016 season to go, Hamilton is now on 250 points, while his Mercedes team-mate Rosberg on 248.

Fernando Alonso, Max Verstappen, Daniel Ricciardo, Jolyon Palmer and Sergio Perez lined-up for Team F1 and showed us exactly why they’re racing drivers and not football players.

Gobbled up by Rosberg, both Ferrari drivers and then the Williams of Valtteri Bottas and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo on the long run down to the opening chicane, Hamilton was left facing an nearly impossible task of winning for a third year on the trot in Italy.

This race weekend has been notable for announcements that the retiring Felipe Massa and Jenson Button will leave F1 at the end of the season – possibly temporarily in the latter’s case.

He said: “To be honest, I said that to reassure my engineers who I knew would be feeling nervous”.

He caught Haas driver Romain Grosjean with two laps to go but the Frenchman was able to hold him off. “But he has had many good starts and it can happen”.

Rosberg just wants to concentrate on the race and not think about other stuffs.

The championship leader and defending three-time champion clocked a best lap time of one minute and 21.135 seconds to outpace the German by almost half a second. “I came with my A game today”. A big thank-you to all the people that have come out, but what this team has achieved, as race by race I continue to say, is just phenomenal.

Hamilton has blamed the clutch and variable temperatures it can produce which make it hard to predict and produce a smooth getaway, as evident in his tardy start at Monza.

“I can assure you that on Tuesday it’ll be the single thing we’re talking about, because everything else we’re doing really well”, he said. I’ll try to understand it later.

Palmer was quite angry after retiring, speaking to channel 4, he said: “I tried to take a place from Nasr and he forced me off the track and we crashed”.