As it turned out, Kimi Raikkonen's horrid start and Nico Rosberg's six-race old Mercedes engine blowing up right towards the end of the race were not the most dramatic moments of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza that was won comfortably from pole position by reigning F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton.
A post-race investigation by race stewards that showed the left-rear tyre of Hamilton's Mercedes being inflated under the recommended level stated by tyre supplier Pirelli temporarily threw the decision of the race in doubt as there was a chance of Hamilton being disqualified and Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel inheriting the win despite the former four-time F1 champion finishing just over 25 seconds behind Hamilton on the road.
Ultimately, however, the Mercedes team were able to show that their tyres were inflated to at least the amount specified via measurements that they took prior to the start of the race and hence the decision was allowed to stand.
The FIA's technical delegate had even found the pressures to be low on Rosberg's Mercedes but any penalty on the German would have been moot given his horrid weekend in relation to that of his teammate who now holds a 53-point lead over his teammate in the drivers' world championship.
The championship battle, which has largely been dominated by Hamilton, swung in the Briton's favour when a problem with Rosberg's engine on Saturday forced him to revert to the power unit he had been using for the six previous rounds while the updated engine in Hamilton's car gave him no trouble whatsoever. The resulting straight line speed advantage for Hamilton was enough to give him a comfortable pole position over the Ferraris of Raikkonen and Vettel and allowed him to storm off into the distance as Raikkonen faltered and Vettel was unable to catch him.
Rosberg, on the other hand didn't get away cleanly from his fourth place starting position and got briefly embroiled in a battle with the Williams-Mercedes drivers Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas before getting ahead of them after the first round of pit stops and then setting off in pursuit of Vettel's Ferrari.
The gap slowly came down and Rosberg was within striking distance when his car's engine went up in flames at the second chicane of the 5.793km Monza Autodrome.
With Rosberg out of the race third and fourth places went to Massa and Bottas whose result gives the Williams Racing team a significant boost over the troubled Red Bull-Renault squad for whom Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat could only manage eighth and tenth places respectively.
Behind a battling Raikkonen, who recovered to finish fifth after falling outside the top ten, the Mercedes powered Force Indias of Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg were sixth and seventh with Marcus Ericsson's Sauber-Ferrari in ninth place in between the two Red Bull Racing cars.
There was little cheer for four former F1 champions yet again at Monza, much the way it has been for most of the season. The combination of Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, McLaren and Honda endured yet another difficult weekend with Button finishing only 14th and Alonso having to retire with a blown power unit.
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