Oscar Piastri looked like he was cruising to victory over this McLaren team mate Lando Norris in today's Italian GP, but in the end it was Charles Leclerc who inflicted a painful defeat on Team Papaya.
Piastri had qualified in second place behind Norris to set himself up for a front row start in today's race at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, and he was on alert for any opportunity that presented itself when the lights went out.
Initially it seemed that Norris had got the perfect start, while Piastri has his hands full battling George Russell into the first corner. In the end he was able to squeeze the Mercedes side, which took to the escape road.
Piastri emerged in the idea position to slipstream Norris and lunge down the inside of the second chicane, startling norris who ended up losing another place to Charles Leclerc before recovering.
Piastri managed to work his way out of DRS activation range of the Ferrari, and at the first round of pit stops Norris was able to pull off the undercut and restore himself into P2.
The question of team orders didn't come into play, with Piastri pulling away from Norris during the second stint so there was no question of being able to hand the spot back to Norris. Victory for the Australian seemed assured.
But McLaren had been so busy managing race strategies to see off the threat from Mercedes and Red Bull that they missed Ferrari going for an audacious one-stop plan which put Leclerc and Carlos Sainz ahead on the road.
Sainz was quickly dispatched, but Leclerc managed to sustain his pace to the finish enough to give him a 2.664s margin at the line,with Norris a further four seconds back when the chequered flag came out and Sainz a long way back in P4.
While the Tifosi went wild at Ferrari's glorious home success, Piastri was looking sick wish disappointment at missing out on what would have been his second F1 carer win after his maiden victory in Hungary.
"It hurts. I'm not going to lie, it hurts a lot,” Piastri said when interviewed by Nico Rosberg in parc ferme after the end of the race. "Just when you finish second, it hurts. So yeah, painful.”
However he didn't feel that McLaren's race strategy had cost him the win.
“We did a lot of things right," he insisted. "There were a lot of question marks on the strategy going into the race. From the position we were in, with the tyres looking like they did, doing a one-stop seemed like a very risky call.
“We had everything to lose from being in the lead of the race," he pointed out. "Charles could try something a bit different, he was going to finish third either way. He picked the right gamble.
"In the end [Ferrari's call] was right," he acknowledged. “We considered it the whole race but it wasn't possible with the amount of graining that I had. My front left was pretty heavily grained. We didn't expect it to clear back up again, which it did.
“In hindsight, everyone's a legend after the race and unfortunately, we got it a bit wrong, myself being a big part of that," he said. "But very very happy with the pace, and the race that I managed to achieve."
As for Lando Norris, his dominant victory in last week's race at Zandvoort had planted the idea that he could challenge Max Verstappen for the title, but not converting pole to a win today has dampened those hopes.
“We're disappointed of course, but Ferrari did a better job," he admitted. "They had a better car and that's hats off to them.”
"We knew it would be tight, but just with our car and some of the limitations we have, it wasn't possible," he said. "We considered [one-stopping] the whole race, but it wasn't possible with the amount of graining I had."
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