Bottas trolls Ferrari over the radio

Lewis Hamilton took a pulsating victory as Ferrari failed to capitalize on their front-row lockout. Vettel clashed with Hamilton on the first lap itself and fell back, eventually ending up on fourth place after a time penalty for Max Verstappen.

However, Bottas was the most savage as he had this radio message after the end of the race.

Bottas told over the radio: "Formation all the way home, just to show our Italian colleagues" #F1 #ItalianGP

— Luke Smith (@LukeSmithF1) September 2, 2018

The race was an exciting one from start to finish as Raikkonen won the start for Ferrari and Vettel followed him nicely past Turns 1 & 2. However, Hamilton caught up to the Ferraris quickly and positioned himself on the outside of Vettel.

The German locked up a bit and tried keeping his position but banged into Hamilton's sidepod and turned around, damaging his front wing in the process and running last. He pitted for a new wing and tyres and fought his way back through the field to finish fifth, which eventually turned into fourth.

Verstappen and Bottas were involved in a race-long battle but towards the end, when the latter tried passing the Dutchman on the outside of Turn 1, Verstappen moved under breaking which led to contact between the two.

The stewards handed Verstappen a five-second penalty but he did not yield his track position to Bottas, which allowed the Ferrari of Vettel to catch up to the duo and slot into that 5-second gap to move up one position.

Bottas meanwhile played the role of wing-man to perfection as he held up Kimi Raikkonen for many laps after the Finn in the Ferrari pitted, which allowed teammate, Lewis Hamilton, to catch up and make up the gap.

Ferrari seemingly had the race under control but that stint behind Bottas hurt Raikkonen big time as his tyres suffered a lot of blisters which meant that he could not put up a fight when Hamilton eventually decided to go for the win.

Ferrari will be ruing the missed opportunity to move past Mercedes in the constructors' standings and Vettel will need to do some introspection after his overeager move to keep position cost him many points and led to a 30-point deficit to Hamilton in the drivers' title race.