Jackie Stewart (GBR) Tyrrell celebrates his twenty-seventh and final GP victory on the podium. German Grand Prix, Nurburgring, 5 August 1973. © Sutton Images. No reproduction without permission
He now needs just four more triumphs to surpass Nigel Mansell’s British record of 31 Grand Prix victories.
As well as taking pole on Saturday and victory on Sunday, Hamilton also claimed the race’s fastest lap to complete his fourth career hat-trick and first since Malaysia. Of the current field only Sebastian Vettel (8) and Fernando Alonso (5) have more hat-tricks than the Briton, though interestingly Rosberg has never scored one.
Hamilton now has six wins this season to Rosberg’s four, and has cut the German’s lead in the drivers’ standings down to 22 points with six races remaining and a maximum of 175 points left to be won.
Rosberg’s second place gave Mercedes their seventh one-two of 2014 meaning that the Silver Arrows now need just three more over the remaining six races to tie McLaren's 1988 record for the most one-twos in a season. It’s a point of interest that the last time Mercedes managed to get one or more car home in the top four at Monza was all the way back in 1955 when Juan Manuel Fangio and Piero Taruffi finished, like Hamilton and Rosberg, in first and second.
Behind the Mercedes duo, Felipe Massa - racing at Monza as a non-Ferrari driver for the first time since 2005 - came home in third to claim his first rostrum of the season. There’s a certain irony to the fact that his first podium for Williams - and 37th overall - should come at Ferrari’s home track given that all 36 of his previous top-three finishes came whilst driving for the Italian team.
Valtteri Bottas came home in fourth place to give Williams a total of 27 points on the day and help lift the Grove-based team into third in the constructors’ standings above Ferrari. Sir Frank's squad now have 177 points - a staggering 22 more than they scored over the previous four seasons combined.
An interesting bit of trivia regarding Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, who finished fifth, is that for the second race in a row the Australian set his fastest race lap on the final lap. Of course, he also finished ahead of team mate Sebastian Vettel yet again…
Elsewhere in the top ten, Force India’s Sergio Perez scored his best result since Austria with seventh, whilst Jenson Button was a points-scorer for the ninth time in 13 races with eighth. Button’s team mate Kevin Magnussen, meanwhile, was eventually classified tenth after being handed his second penalty in two races for forcing another driver off the track.
The Dane’s penalty lifted Kimi Raikkonen into ninth on a hugely disappointing day for Ferrari at their home event. Raikkonen did at least extend the Scuderia’s record points-scoring streak to 80 races, which was good news because Fernando Alonso’s own 15 race points-streak - dating back to Abu Dhabi last year - came to an end. The Spaniard’s retirement, which rather unbelievably was his first from a mechanical problem since Malaysia in 2010, also means that we no longer have a driver who has finished in the points at every race this season.
Finally, Sauber finished with both of their cars outside of the points for the 13th consecutive race, extending the longest barren run in the team’s history, whilst Max Chilton retired from a race for just the second time in his career.