Hamilton hoping statement arrival at Monza will lead to 'phenomenal' win for Ferrari

MONZA, Italy (AP) — After a statement entrance at Monza’s iconic circuit, Lewis Hamilton is targeting history at this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix.

Hamilton arrived at his team's home race in style on Thursday. The British driver drew up to the paddock gates in his new Ferrari F40, wearing a black suit and brown overcoat — despite the heat in northern Italy.

The seven-time world champion has five Monza triumphs among his 105 race victories in a trophy-laden career. But Hamilton is aware there could still be “a first ahead of (him).”

“Coming into this weekend, I’ve really being thinking about the sheer magnitude of this grand prix,” Hamilton said. “If I was to win, you go into new territory, winning in Monza for the first time with Ferrari is something … it would be phenomenal.

“And probably the thought of, if I did do that, I probably will be the only Black driver to ever do that for Ferrari in Italy, probably in history, maybe. And so just a lot of those thoughts have been through my mind. The pressure’s high.”

After a dismal first season with Ferrari, Hamilton finally got his maiden win for the Scuderia — and his first since 2024 — in June, in Barcelona.

That threw him right into the title race. Hamilton is second in the standings, level with former Mercedes teammate George Russell and 59 points behind Kimi Antonelli — the driver who replaced the British star when he left Mercedes.

Hamilton’s hopes have been boosted by Ferrari’s improved reliability. He is the only driver to finish in the top 10 of every race this season.

“I see a different focus this year to last year,” Hamilton said. “Last year, I felt like there wasn’t really a North Star. We were kind of, I think, doing the best we could, but not really knowing where exactly we were trying to aim for. And now we have a North Star. We know where we need to work towards.

“(The team have) done a tremendous job to really pull together and deliver. And this is a step forward … to see bits coming each weekend, adding to the car, it’s exciting to see that we are pushing. I strongly still believe that we’ve got what it takes to win.”

A sixth triumph at Monza on Sunday would see Hamilton move clear of Michael Schumacher as the driver with the most Italian Grand Prix wins.

Hamilton’s last win at Monza came in 2018 but he heads into the weekend on the back of eight consecutive top-five finishes, and with the knowledge that Antonelli will start at the back of the grid on Sunday after being sanctioned for taking on a new engine.

“With the power that he has, which is more than most of the cars around him, and with the performance that they have, which has been the quickest car generally through the year, he should slide through that pack pretty easy,” Hamilton said.

There has been talk of divided loyalties among the fans this year, with Antonelli being Italian, but Hamilton has no doubt who the passionate, red-clad Tifosi will be cheering on.

“Ferrari’s Ferrari,” he said. “I think for the Italians, it’s the Pope and Ferrari, as far as I’m aware. And pasta and pizza and family.”

See AP’s full auto racing coverage here

Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli of Italy arrives to attend a news conference ahead of Sunday's Italy Grand Prix, at the Monza racetrack, Italy, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain attends a news conference ahead of Sunday's Italy Grand Prix, at the Monza racetrack, Italy, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain, left, his teammate Charles Leclerc of Monaco, right, and Hamilton's mother Carmen Larbalestier attend the Drive to Monza event in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026 ahead of Sunday's Formula one Italy Grand Prix. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain gestures during a news conference ahead of Sunday's Italy Grand Prix, at the Monza racetrack, Italy, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain gestures during a news conference ahead of Sunday's Italy Grand Prix, at the Monza racetrack, Italy, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

HONG KONG (AP) — From Asia to the U.S., Microsoft’s outage involving services like Outlook and Teams has dragged on for hours and impacted many users, companies and some government operations as the technology giant struggled with fixing the issue.

Microsoft said in an update Friday that the outage was affecting a wide range of Microsoft 365 offerings that interact with its Exchange Online and email services. Services including Outlook, Teams and AI assistant Copilot were reported by users to be down.

The Redmond, Washington-based company said it was trying different ways to identify the cause of the problem and get its servers back online, using “a measured approach to identify and repair affected infrastructure.”

The company said it did not have any indication that the outage was caused by malicious activity and would treat the incident “with urgency and priority until full resolution.”

More than 130,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook earlier on Thursday although new reports have since fallen from that peak.

A series of posts by the company on X suggested its engineers were struggling to get the problem fully under control.

Hours after saying it managed to successfully restore service health and functionality, the company said it had updated its list of impacted services and was continuing to address the issue.

Its most recent post offered little hope for users expecting a quick resolution.

“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they’re not taking as expected,” the company wrote.

U.S.-based industrial technology company Workhorse Group Inc. delayed a conference call for its quarterly earnings because of the outage.

In Australia, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Friday Microsoft had likened the widespread outage to the CrowdStrike outage in 2024.

Burke said he had spoken to Microsoft’s top executive in Australia and the government’s national cybersecurity coordinator about the global disruption.

"They (Microsoft) don’t believe they are dealing with a cyberattack. They believe that they are dealing in some ways (with something) similar to what we saw with respect to CrowdStrike where there is an update that has gone awry,” Burke told reporters in Sydney.

Texas-based cybersecurity company CrowdStrike blamed a bug in an update that allowed its systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off a global tech outage in July 2024 that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.

Hong Kong businessperson Danny Lau, who runs an aluminum firm, said his company's Outlook accounts could not receive updates from their U.S. customers due to the outage. If the situation dragged on further, this could “impact the production timeline,” he said.

Air India said its flight operations were unaffected by the global Microsoft outage. However, it temporarily rerouted its email services to ensure customer queries continued to reach the airline without interruption, the company said in a statement.

IndiGo, another Indian airline company, said it also reported disruptions to its email support services, which affected its ability to receive customer queries. The airline in a statement on X said its other support channels remained operational and its flight operations were unaffected.

Singapore’s Government Technology Agency said that government emails were down and that the agency is working with Microsoft to resolve the issue.

The Philippines' Supreme Court said in a statement on X that the ongoing Microsoft 365 service outage has affected some of its operations, including email responses.

In Japan, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said the outage impacted the government’s IT infrastructure and that they were “keeping a close eye on the developments.”

OpenAI and Anthropic each reported that they were facing problems connecting with Microsoft 365 tools, underscoring the ripple effects of outages as more people use artificial intelligence platforms to interact with other companies’ software.

AP journalists Adam Schreck in Bangkok, Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia, Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi and Mayuko Ono in Tokyo contributed.

FILE - A Microsoft logo and sign outside the Microsoft Visitor Center are seen at the company's headquarters Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Redmond, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)