Webbah reached the finish first at Monza. Kat left with the win, and a championship fight that looks rather different with two rounds to go.
Three seconds dropped the Williams driver to fourth, behind Kat, rbn and Kelloggs. Having arrived with a 29-point advantage over the Haas driver, Webbah now leads her by 14. His recovery to the front had been good enough to win the race on the road; it had not been enough to cover the penalty.
Kat more than halves the gap
Deficit to Webbah · D2 drivers’ championship · points
Kat took her second D2 win of the season, her first since Texas, by 0.638 seconds over rbn. Kelloggs was only 1.010 seconds behind, adding a podium to the first IMS victory he had taken in D3 earlier that day.
There was considerably less to celebrate in the other Red Bull. Wadz had beaten Martim to pole by a hundredth and was still thinking about the podium on the final lap. He finished 12th, one place behind the driver he blamed for putting him in the wall.
Kat makes Webbah’s recovery count for less
From fourth on the grid, Kat finished ahead of both men who had led her in the championship. Walter could manage only seventh for Ferrari, while Webbah had spent much of the afternoon trying to rescue a weekend he already sounded thoroughly fed up with.
The Williams driver qualified eighth, 0.460 seconds off pole. Before the race, he had welcomed the extra feedback from his wired controller setup. Afterwards, he blamed its fierce vibrations for repeated front locking, including at Turn 4, and was equally blunt about his own performance.
“Shit track, shit driving by me.”
Yet he also described recovering from last to first during the race. The speed was there, even on a day when little else seemed to please him. He crossed the line 0.830 seconds ahead of Kat, leaving more than two seconds of his penalty uncovered.
That was an expensive shortfall. Beating Kat would have added seven points to his advantage; fourth instead cost him 15. She had finished third in Japan and now has a win to follow it, passing Walter for second in the standings along the way.
“Yes come on guys haha,” she wrote after the race. There is still work to do, but she no longer needs an extraordinary collapse from Webbah to put herself in front.
Wadz’s afternoon comes apart with one lap left
For a while, Red Bull’s qualifying session looked like the start of something very good. Wadz’s 1:18.688 was just enough to beat Martim’s Aston Martin, with Kelloggs another 0.033 seconds back in third. Both Red Bulls were ahead of Kat, Walter and the Williams pair.
Wadz had started second in Japan and finished eighth. At Monza, he was still in contention for the podium as the race entered its last two laps.
A collision on the penultimate lap prompted him to slow and let Kat back through. He did not want to risk five seconds when he believed he could recover the place on the final tour.
“I knew I would get Kat on the last lap,” he said afterwards.
He never got that chance. A separate incident with Martim at the exit of Turn 2 sent him onto the grass and into the wall. Wadz has lodged a report accusing Martim of squeezing him off; Martim denied moving across in the post-race chat.
The Aston Martin already had ten seconds of penalties. That only added to Wadz’s frustration: he had given a place back to protect his result, then lost it in a fight with someone carrying a much larger penalty anyway.
He finished 13.095 seconds behind Kat, taking one point for 12th and another for pole.
A front row with little to show for it
D2 Monza · grid → finish · provisional classification
“Fucking last lap that too.”
Kelloggs finds winning rather calming
Kelloggs was having a very different Sunday. Before D2 qualifying, Kat had teased him about his muted reaction to winning D3. His explanation was that a first victory had made him “really calm”.
He promptly qualified third, 0.043 seconds from another pole, and finished on the podium again. There had been trouble along the way—Kelloggs believed he had been hit in the early running, while Kyo said he felt no contact and suggested a connection issue—but third completed a win-and-podium double at Monza.
rbn, meanwhile, followed his first win in Japan with second from tenth. Nobody gained more places from grid to finish, although his tyres were making the closing laps hard work. He reported 70 per cent wear on the front-left against just 20 on the front-right, and no battery left when he tried to catch Kat.
His congratulations to the winner came with the admission that he had tried to close her down at the end. A second successive victory had been less than a second away.
Schokolade was rather less complimentary. He filed two reports against rbn over their encounters on laps 22 and 23, alleging contact at Roggia and then being forced off, losing two places. rbn argued there had been room on the outside. Both have submitted footage.
The Audi driver finished sixth from 12th, with Pooldiver eighth from last. Their own last-lap fight left Pooldiver unhappy too; Schokolade’s position was that nobody should expect to be let through on the final lap.
Forestal, ninth, chose to draw a line under his disputes. Without his own onboard, he abandoned an attempt to remove a lap-four penalty. He also asked for Connor’s report about Kyo’s lap-24 rejoin to be closed, despite having described the move as dangerous.
“Fia imma do yall a favour,” he wrote. “Less work”.
Ferrari’s lead is down to six
Webbah found little satisfaction in fourth, but Williams had still taken a substantial bite out of Ferrari’s constructors’ lead. Kyo followed him home in fifth, giving the team 28 points against Ferrari’s 12 from Walter and Connor, who finished tenth.
Williams take 16 points out of Ferrari
Ferrari’s advantage · D2 constructors’ championship · points
Provisional constructors’ standings. Maximum available over the final two rounds: 110 points.
Kat’s win keeps her own title challenge very much alive, but cannot do the same for Haas. Even two perfect remaining rounds would leave them on 280, short of Ferrari’s 283. The constructors’ fight is now between Ferrari and Williams.
For Walter, seventh also means slipping behind Kat in the drivers’ standings. He is 32 points off Webbah, with Kyo 48 back and xAQxFr clinging on at 62. All five remain mathematically in contention with 64 available.
Provisional drivers’ standings. Abu Dhabi and Brazil remain.
Abu Dhabi could produce either a new leader or a champion. A Kat win with Webbah fifth would put her three points ahead before the pole and fastest-lap bonuses. At the other extreme, Webbah could settle the title with a full 32-point haul if Kat finished fifth or lower: his advantage would be at least 33, with only 32 left in Brazil.
