Red Bull star stripped of victory at Italian GP as stewards issue statement

Red Bull's Tim Tramnitz was stripped of his race win in Formula 3 in the weekend's sprint race at Monza after a mishap during the start procedure cost him dear.

The 20-year-old German thought he'd claimed victory in the season's finale but an inquiry after the race saw him hit with a time penalty that has dropped him outside of the top 10. As a result Rodin Motorsport’s Roman Bilinski inherited his maiden F3 victory.

Stewards heard from the team representative and Tramnitz, who races for MP Motorsport as part of the Red Bull Junior Team, as part of their investigation. After the evidence was examined he was found to have failed to properly engage the start procedure and hit with a 10-second penalty.

He fell from first to P18 with the German saying on social media: "We did a great job on track securing the win in the sprint today!

"Due to a technical issue which wasn’t the team's fault, I wasn’t able to engage the start procedure in the formation lap, which resulted in a 10-second time penalty. This one is painful!"

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The German won the Monza Sprint race 12 months earlier and finished the season as the fourth placed driver in the standings. Brazilian Rafael Câmara claimed the title.

The FIA explained decision: "Race Control checked all cars regarding the engagement of the start set-up procedure at the start of the formation lap and found that only car 17 had not engaged it, therefore it was reported to the Technical Delegate.

"According to the Report of the Technical Delegate, the data from Car 17 shows that the driver did not engage the start set-up procedure for the formation lap as required by the F3 2025 System User Manual."

Red Bull ultimately won the weekend's main event with Max Verstappen landing his third win of the season around Monza. The Dutchman put his car on pole position on Saturday and, despite an early back and forth with Lando Norris, ultimately took charge.

He won by over 18 seconds - the biggest winning margin of the season - to cement his position in third in the drivers' standings. The Dutchman had been four months and eight races without a win but his spot on the top step of the podium never looked in doubt.

Verstappen said after claiming the 66th win of his career: "I could see the pace was good, I just needed to settle in. I could see the pace was there and quite quickly we were back in the lead. This was an unbelievable weekend."