ITALIAN GRAND PRIX

There are some things that leave you with this irrepressible feeling in your gut that you've just witnessed an event that will go down in history. The 2019 Italian Grand Prix was one of those things.

Belgium was about loss. Italy was about triumph.

This weekend marks Charles Leclerc's second win at Ferrari, which makes it two straight weekends of wins in a row.

Finally, this is Charles' win and it's a win that he can celebrate. He did everything right, and with Seb spinning out at the beginning of the race, he did it all without a teammate to help. Mercedes threw everything at him and there was nothing they could do. He was unstoppable. He earned this.

People keep saying that Charles and all the younger drivers who have arrived on the F1 scene in the past couple of years are "the future". But take one look at that jubilant, never-ending crowd which stretched towards the horizon as Charles took the top step of the podium in Monza and you'll know right away: the future is here. And it's Charles.

See below for my race notes.

Free Practice 1

- Charles being strapped into his car for the first one as an F1 winner 

- The camera went on Charles in the garage and he was coughing but then smiled and waved to show he was happy and ok 

- Max is going to have to start from the back of the grid from penalties 

- Spa and Monza are the two hardest races on engines so reliability is starting to fail 

- Kimi has a bad spin into the wall and red flag to clean it up 

- Sainz spun 

- I freaking love when Norbert Vettel shows up. Crofty calls him "Father Vettel"

- Perez gone rearwards into the barrier. Scary. Session red flagged.

- This rain is really messing with people.

- Crofty calls this session so far the equivalent of Bambi on Ice.

- Pierre Gasly has been beached on a bump and he did a good job getting it back on  track and handling it but they did red flag it for a third time 

- There’s no point in listing all the people that spin or go off this session because it happens constantly

Free Practice 2

- not a lot going on this session, it’s mostly rained out 

Free Practice 3

- officially no chance of rain today after all the rain yesterday

- Session starts at regular time but the pit exit will remain closed because they’re still cleaning up a bad F3 crash from this morning in the parabolica. So nobody can go out until they open the exit 

- Ok there’s crashes and then there’s THAT F3 CRASH, WHAT WAS THAT?? Most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen and it basically flew I to space. Thank God they’re taking the curb out that launched him into space for the rest of the weekend 

- Peoples times are getting deleted for exceeding track limits 

Quali 

- Ferrari is so confident for Q1 that they’re using the medium tires while everyone else is on softs so that Ferrari can have a fresh soft tire to change into later

- For some reason Renault is incredibly fast in Q1 

- Q1 red flagged with 4 minutes left because Perez’s Mercedes powered engine died again just like last week

- Albon having a really hard time keeping it within track limits 

- Out in Q1: Grosjean, Perez, the two Williams and Maxy because they put him out at the end because he was going to start at the back anyway.

- The surprise is that Stroll made it into Q2 

- Maxy reported losing power as soon as they put him out in Q1 which isn’t so bad because he was going to start at the back anyway but it’s a cause for concern for the race 

- Gasly wouldn’t help Kvyat get a toe

- Out in Q2: Gio, Mag, Kvy, Nor and Gas 

- This is so weird because Lance Stroll is in Q3

- Q3 is a complete mess with the toes because nobody is where they should be Kimi put it in the barrier again for the second day in the row and Q3 is red flagged while they clean it up. Then they’ll start Q3 again with 6.5 min to left 

- This little child had "Leclerc" written on his face and I think we should all adopt this style

- The last six minutes of this were some of the most chaotic and stressful qualifying I’ve ever seen. Everyone waited until someone else went out first and then Renault blinked first and everyone filed out but then the Renault in front which was Hulk cut around a side road to avoid being first which was crafty and then the pack slowed down so he would emerge in front again and then that cost them 10 seconds so none of them got to the line to actually put down another time before the end of the session except Carlos Sainz who was way slower than Charles and so Charles good lap before ended up being his only timed lap and thus he got pole

- Charles got pole 2 weeks in a row and the reception for him at Monza was that of a king and it was a beautiful thing to see

- I’ve never seen THAT much confusion at the end of the Quali 

- Race control just put a blanket statement over this last part of Quali and said « the last lap of qualifying is under investigation » 

- Charles came over the radio at the end and was like « what a mess » 

Pre-Race 

- Still no one is over that insane qualifying 

- The tension here is so high and you can tell history is about to be made

- Finally it’s a Ferrari feature instead of a Mercedes 

- Kimi starts in the pit lane cause he crashed out

- Perez has new engine 

- They have a countdown clock 

- This is the only place where the national anthem is this big of a deal 

- They had a cool plane flyover that did the Italian flag with smoke

- I love Lando’s bright yellow Rossi bucket hat 

Race 

- this event feels like a holy day honestly. There’s that much weight to this 

- Max out in a big crash in the back which we haven’t seen yet

- Charles keeps the lead yes!!!

- Seb got stuck behind Hulk and now he’s in 5th but then Seb took it back 

- Daniel is in 5th and moved on his teammates

- there's this insane thing where SEB SPINS FOR NO REASON and rejoins the track right as Stroll's coming by, hits him, then Stroll has to rejoin, and then nearly takes out Gasly. Unbelievable.

- Seb gets 10 second time penalty for rejoining unsafely which I hate to say it but that was totally fair

- Kimi under investigation for starting on the wrong tires

- Maxy up to 16th by lap 14 but he’s having power issues again, whyyy

- Lance gets a drive through penalty because Seb caused the problem but then Lance did the same thing that Vettel did

- 5 second penalty for Albon for passing off the track on Kmags 

- Kimi gets penalty for starting on wrong tires

- Mercedes pitted Hamilton exactly when Charles lost back tire life 

- Charles kept Hamilton at bay and now they showed Charles a black and white flag so a warning, not a penalty, was sufficient they said but he didn’t do anything wrong so????

- Sainz left the pit lane with a loose tire, haven’t seen that in a while, and now there’s a virtual safety car to remove it 

- Kvyat out from a Honda engine thing. It’s smoking. And then another virtual safety car while they clear it 

- Lewis locked up and went through the runoff area trying too hard to get Charles and it let Bottas ahead and now Bottas is in 2nd chasing Charles 

- Kmags retires and we don’t know why 

- Mercedes gave it everything, absolutely everything they had, and they couldn't do a thing about Charles, future champion. This is a legendary drive. This is going down in history.

- CHARLES WINS AT MONZA!!!! This ends a 9 year dry spell for Ferrari at Monza. The last time a Ferrari driver won in Italy was Alonso in 2010. CHARLES WINS 2 WEEKS IN A ROW, the first win was his maiden win! Last week's celebrations were muted because of the loss of his friend. But that is not the case today. Today, Charles is king of Italy.

- ALL OF ITALY SHOWED UP TO CELEBRATE CHARLES' WIN. The podium crowd was... wow. His family is there in the front watching. It was a hero's win. It was a hero's drive. I am in the midst of history being made. This young man has the greatest destiny ahead of him and you can feel it when you see him. Unbelievable. Moving. A day of indomitability and celebrations. A truly historic moment.