The Italian Grand Prix 2020 was held in Autodromo Nazionale Monza, Italy on the 6th September, 2020. It takes place over 53 laps of the 5.3793 km long permanent racing facility. This race is regarded as one of the most remarkable and tense races that Formula 1 has ever witnessed.
AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly secured the win as McLaren’s Carlos Sainz finished second, with Racing Point’s Lance Stroll completing the podium. The results were unexpected as Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull (‘Big Three’ in the turbo-hybrid era of F1) failed to make the podium in the jaw-dropping race at Monza.
Pierre Gasly, 24-year-old French National, finished the race in 1:47:06.056 (just 0.415 seconds ahead of Carlos Sainz!) and earned a total of 25 points to seal his maiden F1 win. After 12 long years, Italian AlphaTauri team won the race on home soil under challenging circumstances. This was first win at Monza for AlphaTauri, moving them to within 14 points of their Italian rivals Ferrari in the constructor’s standing.
“Honestly, it’s unbelievable- I’m not realising what’s happening right now. It was such a crazy race”, he said as his team celebrated.
“I have got no words”, continued Gasly. “This team have done so much for me; they gave me my first opportunity in F1 (in 2017), they gave me my first podium (at Brazil, Last year), now they are giving me my first win”.
He concluded by saying, “The last five laps were really hard as my tyres were completely gone and I was sideways in every corner. I could see Carlos slowly closing the gap. And I know myself, I would have been so pissed at myself if I’d lost that win in the last few laps, so I just gave everything I had. I’m so happy right now to get my first win Formula 1”.
Before this win, Gasly had an emotional weekend in Belgium, where he took 8th place and driver of the day honours, having begun that weekend laying flowers in honour of his late friend Anthoine Hubert (who died at Spa-Francochamps). He was even dropped in unceremonious fashion by Red Bull, demoting him to Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri in 2019. He was shocked at this demotion but he used the disappointment as motivation and started working from scratch with his new team. He visited the Toro Rosso factory to meet his new engineers, learn the steering wheel control and even got his seat fitted. Even though, he felt that his career lacked stability, he kept on building his mental strength and focused on improving his track performance. Eventually, all his efforts paid off!
These thoughts must have definitely crossed his mind as he sat on his own on the Monza podium. The hardships that he went through and the problems that he conquered helped him in finishing the race with a win!
He said, “I didn’t want to leave the podium because these kind of moments you never know how many times you are going to be able to enjoy these kind of times. I wish we could have had all the tifosi and grandstands full of people because it is probably the best places to be on the podium.”
He added, “But nevertheless, I just wanted to sit down and take a moment to myself and just enjoy that moment.”
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