The unsung hero of Max Verstappen's dominant F1 Italian GP win

The 2025 F1 Italian GP saw Max Verstappen turn back the clock and take the fans on a trip down memory lane. He took us back to a not-so-distant past where Red Bull was a dominant machine in 2023 and the weekends would often see the Dutch driver secure pole position, take the lead, and comfortably manage the race to win.

The F1 Italian GP almost entirely followed that blueprint, where Max Verstappen secured pole position with the fastest lap in the history of the sport. This was followed by the driver first losing the lead on the opening lap, roaring back to snatch it from Lando Norris' McLaren, and then never looking back.

The driver was quite comfortably 3-4 tenths faster than Norris, who, alongside his stablemate Oscar Piastri, had nothing for the Dutchman.

In the end, Max Verstappen would win comfortably and set the record for the fastest ever race in F1 history. While he was able to do that, and he deserves a lot of credit, the F1 Italian GP win has to be put in context, and it is that context that reveals the unsung hero of the Dutch driver's win in Monza.

The Red Bull technical team, led by Pierre Wach,e has performed a mini-miracle, and the Frenchman is the unsung hero of the Dutchman's latest triumph.

The scale of Red Bull's turnaround

When we talk about Max Verstappen's win in Monza, we do have to remember that this win comes after the Austrian team was not only dominated but also decimated into submission by the rivals on this very track last season. Looking back at the laptimes and the deficit Red Bull faced in the competition was revealing.

On one hand, Max Verstappen was a whopping 7 tenths off pole position in qualifying last season, as the driver was not even in a fight for pole position. This season, he was almost a tenth clear to secure pole. It is the gap in the race that is even more astounding because last year, the Dutch driver did not even contend for a podium, let alone a win.

He was close to 40 seconds behind the race winner when the chequered flag fell, and in essence, the car was a complete afterthought. This season he won the race with a gap of almost 20 seconds and was dominant over his rivals.

In the last 12 months, the Red Bull technical team has exhumed a 7-tenth deficit to McLaren in qualifying and around a 40-second deficit to Ferrari over a race. This is a remarkable turnaround to accomplish in a ruleset that is close to becoming obsolete.

Max Verstappen doesn't accomplish the win without the improvements

There's often an element of lionizing what Verstappen is doing in that Red Bull because, other than him, there's no driver who can extract performance from that car.

At the same time, however, we have to remember that with the scale of struggle that this team had in 2024, there was no way they came to this track confident enough that they'd do well.

Verstappen was here last season in the car as well. And even though he's brilliant, he would be the first to tell you that the car has gone through remarkable work to actually achieve what it has this weekend.

Why it is important to recognize the work of Pierre Wache and the ilk

F1 is an engineering sport with the operator becoming the biggest star. This is precisely why, when things are working well, it's the driver that ends up sweeping all the accolades.

This is why Max Verstappen is a bigger star than Adrian Newey and Pierre Wache. This is also why Lewis Hamilton is a bigger star than the Mercedes HPP that built that rocket ship V6 power unit.

Unfortunately, however, at the same time. At the same time, the credit for success goes to the drivers. The blame for the failure falls on the engineers and the technical department.

The Red Bull technical department has been under the pump in the last 18 months. Pierre Wache, the man who leads it, has faced a lot of flak, as many have almost discredited whatever he did and shifted the focus to Adrian Newey, who is not a part of the team anymore.

This is the same Red Bull team, led by Pierre Wache, who has just provided Max Verstappen with a car that was capable of dominating the Italian GP. And it has done so by eating up a 7-tenth deficit to McLaren.

As the world congratulates the Dutch driver for a brilliant drive, it's important to give Pierre Wache the credit he deserves because we all know that when things go wrong, we know which way the blame will be offloaded.