F1 Italian GP 2019 - Leclerc's 2nd win in a row, Italy rejoices

Charles Leclerc got a good start but had to fight to defend his pole and kept the lead closely followed by Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Sebastian Vettel. The Monegasque also managed to get a large time window to avoid being exposed to the pressure from DRS. At the same time, Sebastian Vettel tried to put the Silver Arrows under pressure and was less than a second behind Valtteri Bottas on lap 4 and thus within striking distance.

But instead of increasing the pressure further, Vettel lost control on lap 6 and spun his Ferraris after driving over the curbs and came to a stop across the track. In a reckless maneuver, the Heppenheimer tried to get his car back on the track, which meant that the approaching Lance Stroll was unable to avoid him and destroyed the Ferrari's front wing. This was a big mistake in two ways, because on the one hand Vettel had to pit and have the front wing replaced and on the other hand the race stewards imposed a 10-second stop-and-go penalty for his dangerous maneuver. This meant the race was over for Vettel.

After lap 20 an ongoing battle between Ferrari and Mercedes
On lap 19, Mercedes tried to trick Ferarri with an earlier pit stop. Leclerc pitted a lap later and managed to keep the lead, but Lewis Hamilton was now in the DRS window and kept increasing the pressure, trying to tempt the Monegasque into making mistakes. But the new No. 1 Ferrari always managed to stay ahead of Hamilton even with the help of the emergency exit as on lap 36 - which was no cause for investigation, according to the race stewards.

Hamilton radioed his crew that there wouldn't be much left of his tires by the end of the race. The pit crew replied tersely, "Keep up the pressure."

On lap 42 Bottas approached Hamilton to within 1.2 seconds and seemed to be faster. And after the start-finish straight Hamilton braked, which led to the Ferrari fans cheering because Hamilton had to drive through the emergency exit, but at the same time Valteri Bottas cashed in on Hamilton's rank and now in turn put pressure on the Ferrari ahead of him and was motivated by his race engineers with a "hunt him down". But even the Finn was no longer able to do anything against the superiority of Charles Leclerc, even if he was in the DRS window at times.

Charles Leclerc kept a cool head and drove to an almost flawless start-finish victory after 53 laps and secured a place in the hearts of the Italians.

Italy cheered the young Monegasque, who spoke in Italian in the interview with Martin Brundle: "I've never been so knackered after a race as I was today. And to win here at home, it's a dream come true."

Will Charles Leclerc now be the new number 1 at Ferrari?
And can he still become world champion? In purely mathematical terms, yes.