September 6th, 2020. Monza. Italian Grand Prix. Round 8 of a pandemic-shuffled season already teetering on weird. Mercedes had won every race but one. Lewis Hamilton was untouchable. Pierre Gasly was a midfield afterthought in an AlphaTauri—a team with two names, a tiny budget, and no business even sniffing a podium.
Then the world glitched.
Hamilton took a penalty. The red flag came out. The frontrunners evaporated. And suddenly, Pierre Gasly was leading the Italian Grand Prix.
Not for a few corners. Not for a few laps. For the rest of the damn race.
It wasn’t just an upset.
It was a tear in the fabric of Formula 1 reality.
Flashpoints in the Madness
- Hamilton’s Pit Lane Penalty – Pits while closed. Takes a 10-second stop-go. Opens the door.
- Red Flag Reset – Leclerc crashes hard at Parabolica. Race suspended. Field shuffled.
- The Frenchman Leads – Gasly nails the restart, jumps Stroll, and never looks back.
- Sainz Hunts – Carlos Sainz in the McLaren chases like a man possessed. Gets within DRS. Still can’t pass.
- The Radio Breaks – Gasly’s comms go silent. He’s leading Monza, and can’t hear his race engineer.
- The Victory Roar – He wins. First French winner since 1996. First non-Big Three win in 7 years. The paddock loses its mind.
The Race That Fell Out of the Sky
Monza is the Temple of Speed, built for horsepower and legend. For most of 2020, it looked set to deliver another Mercedes demolition. Hamilton led from pole. Bottas bogged down. Verstappen was stuck in traffic. And the midfield was busy fighting for TV time.
Then came Kevin Magnussen, parking his stricken Haas just before the pit entry. Marshals waved yellows, then Safety Car, then—crucially—closed the pit lane.
Hamilton didn’t see the warning lights.
He dove in. So did Giovinazzi.
Both were slapped with 10-second stop-go penalties.
And just like that, boom—the floor fell out from under the front of the field.
Then, chaos turned theatrical. Charles Leclerc lost the rear of his Ferrari at Parabolica, slamming into the tyre wall like a rocket-powered brick. He walked away. The race didn’t—red flag.
And when the race restarted from a standing start, Pierre Gasly was third.
Within half a lap, he was first.
The Fight Nobody Saw Coming
Behind him: Lance Stroll, who flubbed the restart. Carlos Sainz, the smooth operator, climbing from sixth like a demon in orange. But Gasly—ice cold, radio-less, foot down—didn’t flinch.
Lap after lap, the world waited for the fairytale to break. But it didn’t. Gasly managed tyres like a veteran, defended like a madman, and lit up sector after sector with enough pace to keep Sainz just out of DRS.
The final laps were dripping with tension. Sainz was closing. The gap was shrinking. But Monza doesn’t give you overtakes unless you take them. And Gasly never offered the chance.
He crossed the line with 0.415 seconds in hand.
And then he screamed. A primal, broken roar. The kind that makes you forget you’re listening to a race car driver and not someone who just broke the universe.
The Roar Heard in Faenza
This wasn’t just any win. This was AlphaTauri—née Minardi—a team based in Faenza, Italy, with a history of shoestring budgets and romantic failures. Their only previous win? Sebastian Vettel in 2008, also at Monza. Also in the rain. Also impossible.
Twelve years later, they did it again.
And the driver? A man who’d been demoted by Red Bull, humiliated in public, tossed aside like a busted front wing. Gasly had rebuilt himself in the shadow of rejection. And now he was standing on top of the world.
Helmut Marko must’ve choked on his espresso.
The Stats Don’t Do It Justice
– First win for a French driver since Olivier Panis, Monaco 1996.
– First win for a team outside Mercedes, Ferrari, or Red Bull since Kimi Räikkönen, Lotus, Australia 2013.
– First Italian team to win at Monza since Ferrari in 2010.
– And the most chaotic podium in years: Gasly, Sainz, Stroll.
A podium with no Mercedes, no Red Bull, no Ferrari. It felt like Formula 1 had been taken hostage by a dream.
A Shockwave Through the System
No one plans for a Gasly win at Monza. Not in 2020. Not with Mercedes dominating. But that’s what made it beautiful.
It was a race that didn’t follow the script. A race that reminded us why we watch in the first place—not for perfection, but for possibility.
Gasly didn’t luck into the win. He earned it. Kept his head in a storm. Managed every lap like his soul depended on it. And when the flag dropped, he didn’t just win the race.
He won back everything.
Because Sometimes, the Sport Remembers
It remembers the heartbreak. The humiliation. The driver who got told he wasn’t good enough.
And sometimes, just sometimes, it hands him a win at Monza. With no one in the mirrors but disbelief.
That day, the champagne wasn’t just fizzy water and celebration.
It was proof.
That the underdog still bites.
That Formula 1, even in the strangest year of all time, can still break your heart in the best possible way.
Gasly didn’t just win the Italian Grand Prix. He shattered the matrix.
