Leclerc Delivers for the Tifosi at the Temple of Speed
Charles Leclerc started fourth, finished first, and gave Ferrari a result that the Monza crowd came to see. Lando Norris had gone fastest in qualifying to claim pole, but pole at Monza does not always convert — and it did not on 1 September 2024. Norris crossed the line third. The 25 points went to Leclerc.
It was the kind of afternoon that confirms what Ferrari fans will tell you: Monza is not just a race, it is an event. Leclerc has now become the name most associated with that event in the modern era, and this result only deepened that association.
How Leclerc Moved Through the Field
Leclerc started from the second row in fourth, ahead of teammate Carlos Sainz who lined up fifth. The pair of red cars were well placed, but neither had the raw qualifying pace that McLaren showed on Saturday. What the race delivered was a different story.
Leclerc worked his way to the front and stayed there, taking 25 points from a grid slot that in weaker hands would have produced a points haul well short of the maximum. Sainz finished fourth, meaning Ferrari extracted 37 points from the top ten — a strong afternoon for the Scuderia as a whole.
The fact sheet does not detail the mechanics of the overtakes or the pit strategy, so what can be said with certainty is this: Leclerc crossed the line first, 7 points ahead of where he started in the standings, and Ferrari's Monza narrative continued.
McLaren's Afternoon: Piastri Salvages Second, Norris Drops to Third
For McLaren, the result was mixed. Oscar Piastri came home second from a P2 grid start, picking up 18 points and doing the job asked of him cleanly. Norris, starting from pole, finished third and claimed the fastest lap as well — the bonus point there keeping his afternoon from being a write-off.
But third from pole at Monza, when your teammate is second and the win has gone elsewhere, is not the return McLaren needed from a weekend in which they had shown genuine pace. Norris took 16 championship points. Leclerc took 25. That gap matters across a season.
The McLaren front row — Norris P1, Piastri P2 in qualifying — suggested the MCL38 was well-suited to Monza's low-downforce, high-speed demands. The race result suggested Ferrari had the stronger hand when it counted.
The Rest of the Top Ten: Mercedes Solid, Red Bull Subdued
Lewis Hamilton brought his Mercedes home fifth from sixth on the grid, picking up 10 points in a clean, unremarkable afternoon by his own high standards. Teammate George Russell had started third but finished seventh — a session that moved in the wrong direction as the laps accumulated.
Max Verstappen finished sixth from seventh on the grid, which for Red Bull in the 2024 season reads as an ordinary result rather than a surprising one. Sergio Pérez was eighth from eighth — grid to finish, no change. The RB20 did not look like the force that had dominated earlier in the year.
Alexander Albon took ninth for Williams from P9 on the grid, a solid point-scoring finish. Kevin Magnussen was the weekend's quiet overachiever — starting thirteenth and finishing tenth to give Haas F1 Team a single point from a grid position that looked unlikely to yield anything.
What This Result Meant for the 2024 Season
At round 16 of the 2024 season, no champion had yet been crowned. Leclerc's 25 points at Monza kept Ferrari relevant in the constructors' picture and gave Leclerc himself the strongest possible result heading into the second half of the campaign. For McLaren, the double-podium was valuable, but the points left on the table from a front-row lockout will have registered in the debrief.
Red Bull's comparative underperformance at Monza — sixth and eighth — suggested the circuit characteristics did not suit the RB20 in the same way they had suited it at power-sensitive tracks earlier in the year. Verstappen's championship lead was intact, but the gap was not growing.
Explore the full 2024 season standings, or use the compare tool to see how Leclerc and Norris tracked across the year.