Nico Rosberg shares his outlook on Lewis Hamilton showing flashes of "brilliance" in Monza

Former F1 champion turned pundit, Nico Rosberg, has shared his opinion on Lewis Hamilton's exploits during the 2025 Italian GP (Autodromo Nazionale Monza) race weekend. In line with this, Rosberg has applauded the Brit for showing 'flashes of brilliance'.

Lewis Hamilton has had a tough maiden campaign with the Maranello-based Ferrari F1 team this year. He has not been able to extract performance out of the SF-25 consistently, and this is one of the reasons why he has yet to secure a podium with the team (in a full-fledged Grand Prix).

However, during last week's Italian Grand Prix race weekend, he was pretty much on pace with teammate Charles Leclerc. In the intensely fought qualifying session, Hamilton ended his outing in an impressive P5, just behind Leclerc. Moreover, the former's time was also extremely close; Leclerc's best Q3 time was a 1:19.007, whereas the Brit managed 1:19:124.

The seven-time world champion had a 5-place grid penalty that meant he started the 53-lap Italian GP from P10. Despite this, Lewis Hamilton made up four places to eventually and his outing in P6 behind his former teammate George Russell (Mercedes).

Looking at how the overall race weekend panned out for Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, via a recent appearance on the Sky F1 podcast, added:

"It was nice to see Lewis having a really solid weekend, feeling comfortable in the car, being quick at times, showing flashes of his brilliance. I think that was an important weekend for him, but at the same time it's testament to how bad it was before. Just by him being close to Charles we're all saying 'this is a great weekend', because so many mistakes before and troubles with pace also."

After 16 rounds of the 2025 F1 season, Hamilton finds himself in 6th place in the drivers' standings.

Italian GP crowd gave Lewis Hamilton an 'extra boost'

Lewis Hamilton is an extremely popular name in Formula 1. The Italian GP was Ferrari's home race, and the atmosphere during the whole race weekend was quite special.

Hamilton experienced it for the first time as a Ferrari driver last week, and Fred Vasseur (team boss) believes that it gave the former an 'extra boost'. Via an interaction with F1, Vasseur added the following:

"I think the energy that he received from the Tifosi Wednesday, Thursday in [Milan] was something very special for him. I don't know if it was expected from him or I don't know what he was expecting from this, but it was something mega and I think this gave him an extra boost all over the weekend."

Round 17 of the 2025 F1 season will take place next week in Azerbaijan (Baku City Circuit, Sep 19 - 21). Considering Lewis Hamilton's strong performance in Monza, he would ideally like to take another step in the right direction.