Max Verstappen's first Formula 1 win in more than three months, and some interesting developments across the grid, meant the Italian Grand Prix weekend had as many interesting narratives as the race itself did - even with its big flashpoint.
Here's what we learned at Monza.
Red Bull's big development priority
Red Bull arrived at this year's Italian GP with an action plan in place to ensure there would be no repeat of its 2024 woes when Max Verstappen could manage no better than sixth.
Having struggled with both extreme balance problems and a lack of straightline speed last season as a consequence of overly draggy wings, the team had committed to a double attack on its problems for 2025.
The end result was an RB21 that was not only more compliant with its aero balance shifts but also, with a Monza-specific wing package in place, much faster on the straights.
Red Bull's downforce levels were pushed even further in final practice as Verstappen tried an ultra-trimmed out rear wing late on.
The more extreme solution didn't make the car easier to drive, especially as it made the balance tricky in the corners, but it definitely delivered a top speed boost.
Red Bull had been unsure if the approach would work, but Verstappen was adamant that it should stick with it despite it being a bit more of a challenge to drive. That call proved to be a genius move.
The four-time F1 champion secured pole position and had found a sweet spot with the balance that not only allowed him to attack on Sunday, but dominate the McLarens.
It was no coincidence that Red Bull elected to put technical director Pierre Wache up on the podium afterwards - as a sign of its appreciation for the efforts to turn things around from its 2024 troubles.
McLaren has opened Pandora's box
McLaren has set out its stall to be scrupulously fair in allowing its two drivers equal opportunity of winning the world championship. However, Monza showed it's at risk of making a rod for its own back in terms of exactly where the line is drawn.
Pitting third-placed Oscar Piastri one lap before second-placed Lando Norris shouldn't have led to a swap of positions. However, a slow stop cost Norris 3.9s and it was that, on top of the undercut, that meant Piastri jumped him.
And the Australian's response when he was instructed to give the position back was telling - saying he thought McLaren had agreed a slow pitstop was part of racing.
He complied with the instruction, a wise move to keep the peace given it was only for second place and he has a healthy championship lead (now 31 points). However, while McLaren argued that it was a combination of the out-of-sequence pitstop compounded by the slow stop, meaning swapping back was logical, it does raise the question of what other circumstances a team mistake could be considered worthy of correcting.
Team principal Andrea Stella said this was not only about fairness but also being consistent with the established principles for a fair championship fight. The trouble is, not every set of circumstances can be covered by these well-intentioned rules allowing the two drivers to fight on an equal basis.
They are well-intentioned, and have generally worked well, but what happened at Monza opens a Pandora's box that could lead to trouble down the line.
'Underwhelming' Antonelli
Monza was familiar territory for Kimi Antonelli with another practice off that was at least not as dramatic as last year's, and another grand prix ending as a 'what if?'.
The difference this time, though, was Mercedes being unimpressed by its young driver and openly admitting that.
Toto Wolff didn't exactly read Antonelli the riot act and there was the usual backing by claiming that he is a great driver with unbelievable ability - but Wolff also called "all of the race underwhelming".
Wolff made it clear that was Antonelli's fault. He lost critical FP2 running by going into the gravel early and, after recovering well to qualify sixth, fell to 10th immediately with a bad start.
A scrappy race followed as Antonelli was shown the black and white flag for repeated track-limits offences, then got a five-second penalty for driving erratically in (an unsuccessful) battle with Alex Albon, which dropped Antonelli from eighth to ninth at the finish.
Wolff thinks Antonelli is carrying the "trauma" and "ballast" from his mistakes session to session and even race to race.
He suggested Antonelli's timid approach to racing Pierre Gasly was a consequence of hitting Charles Leclerc at Zandvoort a week ago, and that cost Antonelli as he "shouldn’t lose even a second" passing an Alpine on old tyres.
Antonelli admits he is happy that a bruising European middle part of the season is over, and he and more importantly his team are now expecting a clear improvement.
Ferrari 'alien' to Hamilton until 2026
Ferrari's homecoming and Lewis Hamilton's first Monza with the team was a typically grand occasion off-track but that is pretty much where the positives ended.
There was no stunning home victory in front of the Tifosi to save Ferrari from what has been such a disappointing season until now - and no sign that a win was ever going to be possible.
In the end, fourth and sixth for Charles Leclerc and Hamilton was inoffensively decent, but there is not much optimism with Ferrari for the remaining races.
Hamilton still talks positively about building confidence but claims he is still not 100% comfortable with what he calls an "alien driving style" - something he says won’t change this year.
Competing for podiums is "off the cards for a while", Hamilton reckons, while Leclerc admitted this was just a case of "lacking a lot" compared to McLaren and also Red Bull - despite feeling like Ferrari maximised its weekend.
Tsunoda behind again on floor spec
Red Bull had yet another small floor upgrade on Verstappen's car at Monza that wasn't track specific - and that Yuki Tsunoda didn't have.
That, sticking with a slightly higher downforce rear wing, being a lamb to the slaughter in qualifying without a tow on either Q3 run, and some damage picked up in a needless clash with Liam Lawson in the second part of the race, make up quite a few mitigating factors for an awful Tsunoda weekend.
Still, any notion of momentum in Tsunoda's bid to get on top of the Red Bull and secure his seat long-term went out of the window at Monza given he was at the foot of the top 10 in qualifying then had a very underwhelming race, while Verstappen dominated.
Tsunoda is clinging to the main positive, which is his one-lap pace in equal circumstances, and he should get back on equal terms with the floor update from the next race.
Still, even in his best moments of late, his race pace has been a major question mark, and he cannot rely on that suddenly being solved by a floor update he admits isn't massive.
Williams is lost on its key weakness
Remember Miami? Where Alex Albon raced and beat both Ferraris and a Mercedes on merit?
Albon reckoned Monza was quite similar to that - just without the result to show for it.
It was still a good Sunday for one side of the Williams garage, as Albon turned a good strategy into seventh place from 14th on the grid.
But he and Carlos Sainz should never have started from the seventh row given how quick the Williams was at Monza, and the team seems lost with its key weakness.
Williams cannot get on top of the tyre warm-up problems that Sainz says turns qualifying into a "lottery" and Albon says is "weird" because it seems to be happening more and more.
Whether that's because the increasingly competitive midfield is exposing the problem more, or Williams has lost its way, is unclear.
But the team tried all sorts of things at Monza to try to get the tyre switched on for crucial qualifying laps and nothing worked consistently.
And with more tracks coming up where tyre warm-up will be tricky, like the next race in Baku, Albon and Sainz both feel Williams cannot afford to keep needing great races to bail out a bad qualifying.
Unhappy Alonso has a silver lining
Fernando Alonso was left ruing his and Aston Martin's misfortune after another race weekend where bad luck struck as it looked on course for another decent points tally.
Having hauled an Aston Martin car that is not the most aero efficient into Q3 at Monza, points looked to be guaranteed before Alonso was forced into retirement from a net seventh place after a mysterious suspension failure as his car ran across the kerbs at the Ascari Chicane exit.
But despite the annoyance of the moment, Alonso is aware of a bigger picture at play at a team that does appear to show it is making the exact progress hoped for this season.
It may be stuck with an AMR25 that is never going to be able to challenge for podiums on pure pace. But after several years where mid-season upgrades have failed, the team has got lost with developments, and it has ended campaigns drifting away, the feeling is very different now.
Under new team boss Andy Cowell, Aston Martin has been more methodical with upgrades, it has focused more on getting correlation right and understanding its factory tools much better.
In fact, Alonso said he had never known the team to be more bullish about where it was at this stage of the year than it was right now.
As Alonso awaits his first Adrian Newey car, annoyances like Monza will fade into the background if he does really get what he hopes is coming.
Power shift at Sauber
After a disappointing Zandvoort weekend thanks to a combination of the car not suiting the track and a terrible start he admitted to having a hand in, Gabriel Bortoleto proved he's now the top dog at Sauber with another strong performance to finish eighth from seventh on the grid at Monza.
After being beaten in qualifying for the 11th time out of 19 (including sprints), Nico Hulkenberg described Bortoleto as a "machine" - specifically a lap-printing one that never runs out of ink.
More from Monza
Mark Hughes' take on the Italian GP's two massive talking points
What we've learned about McLaren's controversial driver swap logic
The glaring hole that's been exposed in F1's racing rules
Bortoleto made Q3 for the fifth time - uncharted territory this season for Hulkenberg, who has never been beyond Q2 - then drove a strong race in which he might even have finished a place higher but for losing crucial time behind Gasly that ensured Albon could overcut him.
However, Hulkenberg retired before the race even started after a hydraulics system problem was discovered on the grid.
Hulkenberg may still have more points - 37 to 18 - and that third place at Silverstone to his name, but of late Bortoleto has asserted himself with qualifying pace key to that advantage.
Bearman close to a ban
Ollie Bearman made his Haas debut stepping in for the banned Kevin Magnussen - and 12 months on, he’s surprisingly close to a one-race suspension himself.
A 10-second penalty for colliding with Carlos Sainz at Monza, which seemed harsh, came with two licence penalty points as well.
This leaves Bearman just two points from an automatic ban, and he will not get any reprieve until early November.
That gives him four races to navigate without incident - which should be doable, although Bearman has now committed three offences deemed penalty-worthy in 2025, so it’s not a given.
