LaPistaMagica,homeofthetifosi,Formula1’soriginalTempleofSpeed™–MonzaisoneofFormula1'strulygreatvenues,butalsoonethat’sbeenbothcruelandkindtousinthepast.Sowhat’sinstorethistimeout.
01The Latest From Monza
02Blessed and cursed in the temple
It might be a traditional stronghold of Ferrari, but you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be stirred by the magic of Monza. Drenched in racing heritage (every turn you take reveals more history, including the original, frankly insane, 38˚ banking) and located in a verdant, forested royal park, Monza is supremely evocative, wildly atmospheric, feverishly intense and utterly captivating.
Monza Madness© Getty Images
It’s also incredibly fast. With top speeds nudging 360km/h and with the record qualifying lap average sitting at 264.362km/h (Lewis Hamilton in Q3 in 2020) Monza is all about thrilling speed. Indeed, it’s so fast that despite the track’s almost 5.8km length, the Italian Grand Prix is routinely the shortest race by time of the season (last year’s Italian Grand Prix lasted just 1hr14m40s).
That focus on outright speed and the power sensitive nature of the track means that it’s often been a tough venue for the team. That was certainly the case in our early years. From 2007 to 2018, with Renault power on board, the team took just three podiums at Monza. In the years since, it has been better, with another three podiums going into the record books, but it’s clear that we’ve not always had the Pista Magica under our spell.
Max's First Date With The Podium In Monza© Getty Images
Don’t get us wrong, Monza isn’t easy, but we’ve also had plenty of epic moments at Monza. Sebastian Vettel’s 2011 win was founded on a stunning quali lap and a full-send move on Fernando Alonso that saw the German take to the grass on the edge of the track to get through. And just two years ago, Max made history here with his second Italian GP win, crossing the line first to seal a remarkable record of 10 consecutive wins.
So, what has Monza got in store for us in 2025. Let’s take look…
03Challenges and Key Factors
Have we mentioned power sensitivity yet? We have? Sorry about this, but we’ll go again. To get the best out of Monza, teams shed downforce from cars to reduce drag and boost top speed on the straights. That necessity hasn’t always suited us in the past but we’ve had good success with lower downforce settings at high speed tracks this year. Max was on pole and finished P2 in Saudi Arabia. In Suzuka, he delivered a blistering qualifying lap to take pole and then marched to a dominant win on Sunday. And at Silverstone, a low downforce set-up saw the Dutch ace rack up career pole number 44. And though changed conditions on Sunday rendered that set-up very difficult, it’s clear that the RB21 does perform well on high-speed circuits. Whether we continue that trend in Monza remains to be seen, but the signs are positive.
Monza’s straights mean that getting a slipstream in qualifying is a real advantage, but it’s not always easy to achieve, especially when everyone’s trying to place themselves in the right spot. It means that traffic, particularly in the final moments of a quali session, plays a big part where jockeying for position can result in drivers not crossing the line in time for a final flyer. Planning, good communication with a race engineer and a watchful eye on the GPS monitor could prove crucial.
Monza isn’t just about pure pace. Those long straights are linked by a series of fiddly chicanes. To get through them efficiently, a car needs good balance for the rattling ride across the kerbs and good traction on exit. When you’re prioritising top speed, that’s not easy to achieve. In mitigation, changes made to the track in 2024 have made kerb riding a little easier.
It’s a one stop. Done and dusted. Charles Leclerc won last year with a single stop, switching from medium to hard on lap 15. Max won in 2023 with a one-stop switch from medium to hard tyres on lap 20. Max did win with a soft-medium-soft strategy in 2022, but with the compound allocation (C3-C5) the same as last year, it’s likely to adhere to a single stop. Also, the pit lane time loss being pretty long it’s not a track on which you want to spend too much time under the 80km/h limit, so one stop it is.
04Monza: Track Layout & Key Features
We’ve covered a lot of the circuit characteristics above, but it’s also worth noting that the track’s chicanes – Rettifilio, Roggia and Ascari – are heavy braking events. Into the first chicane, drivers undergo 4.7g as they slow from 330km/h to around 90km/h in a little under three seconds. The severity of those events puts brakes under a lot of pressure.
The heaviness of that braking event is most noticeable at the start of the race. The run from pole position to the braking zone for the first chicane is 476m (only Mexico, Great Britain, and Spain are longer) and that means 20 very fast, closely bunched cars all looking to squeeze through in short order. Staying out of trouble here is key to a good race.
After the first chicane the circuit swings into the long right-hander of the Curva Grande on the way to the Variante Roggia. The short blast after that is followed by the double right-hander of the Lesmos before drivers power along the next straight towards the Variante Ascari. From there, there’s another straight and then you’re into the awesome high-speed Parabolica before shooting out onto the pit straight and across the line.
