Round 16 of the Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship is the Italian Grand Prix from Monza. Lando Norris handed Max Verstappen a real hammering in his home race last Sunday. Can the triple-world champion fight back with a win at the legendary Italian circuit on Sunday? We give you the answer in our latest Formula 1 betting picks.
In winning last Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix, Lando Norris finished a whopping 22.896 seconds ahead of second-place Max Verstappen. The result was as emphatic as you can get.
Norris started on pole position but was again unable to get past the first corner without losing the lead to Verstappen.
It took Norris until lap 18 to retake the lead from Verstappen. And once he did, there was no looking back.
Norris eased away from the rest of the field to complete a win we have become more accustomed to seeing Verstappen complete in recent years.
Is this the sign of things to come for the rest of the season? Or was Zandvoort a circuit perfectly suited to the McLaren car?
In fairness, McLaren looks to have had the fastest car since Round 6 in Miami. The difference now is that they are turning this superiority into race wins.
In other F1 news, Williams has decided to dump Logan Sargeant. In his place, they have promoted their academy F2 driver Franco Colapinto into their F1 car for the Italian Grand Prix.
Colapinto will be Alex Albon’s teammate for the rest of the 2024 season. The team lost patience with Sargeant after a series of high-profile errors.
Lando Norris is the betting favorite to win the Italian Grand Prix. The British driver is +100 to win the race on the money line.
These aren’t the sort of odds we were seeing on Max Verstappen to win races when his car was 20-plus seconds quicker than the rest of the field. The Dutchman was at odds like -200 to -700 when he was dominating the sport.
Verstappen is the second favorite. The triple-world champion is +275.
Before last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, Verstappen was +175 and Norris was +185. There has been a shift towards Norris in the betting, but it is still saying that the McLaren driver isn’t a cert to win.
Oscar Piastri is third in the betting at +600. There is a change behind the Australian, with Charles Leclerc at +1100 and Carlos Sainz at +1400.
The two Ferrari drivers have overtaken the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton (+1800) and George Russell (+1800) after a poor weekend in the Netherlands for the Silver Arrows.
Charles Leclerc also managed to finish on the podium at Zandvoort, just under three seconds behind Verstappen. George Russell and Lewis Hamilton were down in 7th and 8th places.
Full 2024 Italian Grand Prix betting is on our Las Vegas odds table. The odds we have used are taken from the best Formula 1 Las Vegas betting sites.
| Driver |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lando Norris | +100 | +100 | +100 |
| Max Verstappen | +275 | +275 | +275 |
| Oscar Piastri | +600 | +600 | +600 |
| Charles Leclerc | +1100 | +1100 | +1100 |
| Carlos Sainz | +1400 | +1400 | +1400 |
| Lewis Hamilton | +1800 | +1800 | +1800 |
| George Russell | +1800 | +1800 | +1800 |
| Sergio Perez | +6600 | +6600 | +6600 |
| Daniel Ricciardo | +20000 | +20000 | +20000 |
| Fernando Alonso | +20000 | +20000 | +20000 |
| Esteban Ocon | +50000 | +50000 | +50000 |
| Lance Stroll | +50000 | +50000 | +50000 |
| Kevin Magnussen | +50000 | +50000 | +50000 |
| Alex Albon | +50000 | +50000 | +50000 |
| Pierre Gasly | +50000 | +50000 | +50000 |
| Yuki Tsunoda | +50000 | +50000 | +50000 |
| Valtteri Bottas | +50000 | +50000 | +50000 |
| Nico Hulkenberg | +50000 | +50000 | +50000 |
| Franco Colapinto | +50000 | +50000 | +50000 |
| Guanyu Zhou | +50000 | +50000 | +50000 |
Max Verstappen now hasn’t won a race since Round 10 in Spain.
Despite this, Verstappen (295 points) still has a huge lead at the top of the Drivers’ Championship. The triple-world champion holds a 70-point lead over Norris (225).
The gap closed by eight points at Zandvoort, with a second-place finish by Verstappen limiting the damage.
With the points difference between first and second standing at seven points, it’s still a big ask for Norris to make up 70 points in nine races.
The Brit would require a perfect end to the season and to also pick up the one point available on every race for the fastest lap, as well as the extra points on offer in the three remaining Sprint races.
The betting is suggesting that there is a genuine championship race on. Verstappen is -350, and Norris is +250.
The circuit at Monza is one of the longer F1 tracks with fewer bends than what we saw in the Netherlands last Sunday. It’s probably more similar to Silverstone, where the podium was Hamilton, Verstappen, and Norris.
Even though McLaren didn’t have things all their own way at Silverstone, they still look like the team to beat this weekend. They introduced a series of upgrades ahead of the race at Zandvoort. It would be an understatement to say they were anything but successful.
While all this was going on, Verstappen was again moaning and whining about his car. This is now becoming the world champion’s default setting when he isn’t winning.
So, is the makeup of the Monza circuit that different that Red Bull can recoup the 20 seconds they were down on McLaren last weekend? Probably not is the answer.
And don’t forget, Norris is giving Verstappen a head start in every race. Imagine how much bigger the winning margin would have been had Norris not spent the first 18 laps of the race behind the Dutchman.
Lando Norris is +100 to win the race. For either McLaren to win, the odds are -165. McLaren has to give Norris priority if their two drivers have a chance of winning the race.
So our betting pick to win the Italian Grand Prix is Lando Norris.
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