Freshly crowned champion Lewis Hamilton has revealed that the title race swung back in Monza in his opinion, as the Brit took a surprise victory in Ferrari's home race despite being the heavy underdogs there.
With his fifth championship, Hamilton has made it four titles in the last five years, as only Nico Rosberg managed to beat the man from Stevenage in 2016.
In Monza earlier this season, Ferrari went there off the back of a convincing win in Belgium, with Sebastian Vettel overtaking Hamilton early in the race and not looking back. In Italy, though, the roles were reversed, as Hamilton overtook both Ferrari's on their home turf and took the victory for Mercedes, a hammer blow for Ferrari. Kimi Raikkonen managed to finish second, and Sebastian Vettel down in fourth.
"I would say that day was probably the biggest psychological blow for them," Hamilton reflected when speaking to Autosport.
"They'd had a couple - Seb's psychological difficult time was when he made a personal mistake.
"When the team makes a mistake it's painful, but when you personally make a mistake as a driver, when it's in your control, that's a horrible feeling.
"So, he would have taken that to heart. Then we had that fight at Monza and that would've been a team blow for them surely."
When thinking back about his own race on Sunday, Hamilton admitted that starting behind both Ferrari's was a hard mental blow for him, but he managed to recuperate as the race developed.
"We'd lost the race before.. we knew we were up against it coming into Monza.
"We were hopeful we might be able to out-perform [Ferrari]. Probably with a perfect lap maybe I could have qualified second.
"Actually on my side I was frustrated, pissed off with myself basically. That is just how it is. I never hold back on it.
"Saturday night was difficult, and I was thinking a lot about how aggressive I wanted to be on the Sunday.
"It is very difficult to gauge how aggressive you should be. You go too far, spin off, cause an accident and start from last. Or crash.
"Or don't do enough and you don't capitalise on the window that was there. That's always the unknown."
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