> Lewis Hamilton's overtaking manoeuvre on Kimi at Monza analysed

The highlight of the on-track action of the Italian Grand Prix was definitely Lewis Hamilton’s wheel-locking pass on Kimi Raikkonen for second place into the Rettifilio chicane.

Two-stopping Lewis had been unable to build up enough of a gap over the one-stopping Ferrari to prevent himself from being leapfrogged when he had made his final stop.

That left him having to count on his two new tyre ‘golden laps’ – this a reference to the big boost in grip that new tyres give for a brief period before settling into equilibrium – to pass Kimi.

If he hadn’t done it within those two laps, he probably wasn’t going to be able to do it at all as he would no longer have enough of a grip advantage.

He was just completing the end of his second lap after the stop as they crossed the line to end lap 42 – and at that stage the Ferrari was still 0.3s ahead.

The cars are travelling at 215mph at that point, at which speed that 0.3s difference represents around 32 metres.

Lewis was trying to tuck tighter into the slipstream, but it was looking like he wasn’t going to be close enough.

By the time they reached the braking zone Lewis had closed some of that 32 metres down, but apparently not by enough to outbrake his rival.

Raikkonen’s neck at this point was giving him real trouble. His big impact with the Ascari chicane tyre barriers the day before had left him struggling to keep his head upright under the braking zones, especially this one.

This is officially the F1 calendar’s biggest stop of the year – from a terminal speed of 215mph down to an apex speed of 45mph.

This generates around 5g of longitudinal deceleration, so his helmeted head will have weighed five times its normal weight as he stood on the brakes – and his muscles weren’t able to fully counteract that.

As such he was earlier on the brakes than he would have been if properly fit.

That undoubtedly helped Lewis in his aim, but still left him with a huge task on his hands as they approached their braking points.

Hamilton was far enough back that Raikkonen didn’t feel the need to take a defensive line down the inside.

There was some speculation about whether he even knew he was there, given his neck problems and how far out the Ferrari’s mirrors are, but he insisted afterwards he was fully aware of the McLaren’s presence. He simply didn’t expect it to be close enough.

But that was to reckon without Hamilton’s double whammy: his new tyre grip advantage and a fantastically fine-honed feel for braking distance.

Even by F1 driver standards, his is extraordinary. In an F1 car it is not simply a case of standing on the middle pedal as hard as possible. Do that and the car will slow initially, then as the speed drops and the downforce acting upon it bleeds off, the wheels would then lock.

Instead the driver has to stand on them initially to take advantage of how much braking the car can transfer through its tyres when the downforce of a 215mph airflow is acting on the wings, but then somehow feel the rate at which the downforce and grip is bleeding off, and reduce his pedal pressure at the same rate.

He is trying to keep the brakes just on the point of lock-up, without actually locking them, by modulation on the pedal.

It’s an extremely difficult combination of initial brutality and then great finesse – all within a few tenths of a second.

“I believe that is the key skill for a driver of today’s cars,” says John Booth, Lewis Hamilton’s team boss from his Formula Renault and F3 days, “and Lewis is brilliant at it.”

When Hamilton drove for Booth he was coached by former F3 champion Marc Hynes. He too has some observations pertaining to the art of overtaking.

“He is better than anyone I’ve ever seen at sensing where the gap is going to be, and making an instant call on whether he can use it.

“And when he passes, he instantly puts his whole car in the gap. He doesn’t just stick a nose in front, he gets his whole car there so the other guy has no option, and he does it so suddenly and can do it from so far back because of his feel for braking, that he can ambush people.”

At 215mph the downforce acting on the car is enormous, even with the relatively small Monza wings. But that downforce bleeds off faster than at any other place – again because of the small wings.

So when Raikkonen stood on the brakes, Lewis waited still full on the accelerator at 215mph for a fraction of a second, then put his car – his whole car – alongside.

He was then faced with the small matter of getting it slowed in time to make the turn.

As he began to turn, still with the brakes applied but reducing the pressure, the inside front briefly locked but as it is carrying relatively little load at that point because of the lateral force building on the outer tyres, it did not compromise him too much. At the same moment Raikkonen locked a wheel too.

When the time came to fully commit to the turn Hamilton was still going faster than the optimum, but only slightly, and so was able to simply throw the car into the corner as he came fully off the brakes, generating a brief but spectacular tail slide that scrubbed off the remaining excess speed.

It could not have been more finely judged. Had he arrived there maybe 3-4mph faster, that slide would have had too much momentum and would have become a spin. He’d judged 170mph-worth of deceleration to within that fine a margin.

Of course, it could have been luck. But look through his career and see how many awesome outbraking moves he’s pulled off, and luck begins to look like a totally inadequate explanation.