“It’s Monza Jim, but not as we know it.”

A couple of weeks after a stirring trip to Holland for the final Dutch Grand Prix, F1 made the annual pilgrimage to the Monza park in the suburbs of Milan for the first part of the final double-header of the European season. This continues to be a very different Monza, due both to the effect of the current regulations on the way the cars run on the circuit and also in the atmosphere around the track as, following on from severe storms a couple of years ago, thousands of trees were felled around the circuit which makes certain areas look very barren compared to the verdant forest that traditionally surrounded most of the circuit.

Ahead of the race there was a lot of chatter about the tactical decision by the Mercedes team to change multiple power unit components on Kimi Antonelli’s car for his home race, effectively sealing a starting position right at the back of the grid for the young Italian. It seemed a bit of a harsh decision to make for someone so young and keen to impress his home fans, but obviously as ever seems to be the case these days in F1, Kimi had other ideas about how the weekend was going to pan out!

There were some ongoing changes in the driver line-up due to Isack Hadjar’s continued absence from the grid due to a wrist injury, so Liam Lawson continued to deputise for Red Bull, with reserve driver Yuki Tsunoda again being called up to fill the temporarily-vacant VCARB seat.

Another talking point ahead of the weekend was how the current generation of F1 cars would manage on the long straights of the Monza circuit, as in contrast to the tight and compact Zandvoort track on which the limitations of the 50/50 ICE/battery power split were barely noticeable the lack of many big braking zones and slow corners to recharge the battery were expected to show up the less-desirable side of the current regulations. As one would expect at this stage of the season the teams came up with a solution but, as I will elaborate later, it… wasn’t that great but at least it didn’t result in dangerous closing speeds.

Ferrari had brought a raft of updates to their car ahead of their home grand prix including a revised aerodynamic package and a power unit upgrade so hopes were high of a good result to please the Tifosi, but as practice began to show the order it looked pretty clear that while the red cars seemed to have decent race pace on the long runs they were still lacking that crucial couple of tenths over a single lap to be able to battle for pole.

Ahead of qualifying there was a lot of chatter about whether the teams would try and have their drivers work together to give each other a “tow” in the slipstream although the effect of this was somewhat reduced due to the more extensive opportunities for “straight line” mode reducing the drag compared to the old DRS setup.

Qualifying produced a notable upset in the order as the aerodynamically less draggy Alpine chassis enabled Pierre Gasly to take pole position for the first time with a very creditable 1:21.786 lap ahead of George Russell. Piastri was third fastest in Qualifying but was demoted to 6th on the grid due to an incident where he got in Liam Lawson’s way at the first chicane. This promoted Leclerc and Hamilton to 3rd and 4th and Verstappen to 5th. Rounding out the top ten were Colapinto in the other Alpine ahead of Norris, Lindblad and Bortoleto.

Looking at the onboard footage from Qualifying allowed some useful insights into the way the cars were running at Monza. The teams had clearly thought about their deployment strategy quite carefully so rather than seeing the cars blasting up to top speed half way along the straights and then losing 50-60kph by the end the deployment looked a bit more gradual so although you could see there was a bit of rev-dropping going on it was less pronounced than it was at Melbourne for example. The end result was that we didn’t see particularly high numbers in the various speed traps compared to what we’d usually see at Monza. Indeed, the highest recorded speed all weekend was actually lower than the fastest that was recorded at the Hungaroring which was… well, a bit weird. Cars were barely lifting into Lesmo 1 which on the face of it was impressive but then they were probably approaching it with half the power they were approaching it last year.

Race day was sunny and warm and the audience were treated in the warm-up period to the sight of former champion Sebastian Vettel running a few laps (and doing some donuts) in Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari F2002 as a celebration of 30 years since the German had recorded his Monza win in front of the Tifosi. Obviously I’m just showing my age a bit here but this actually made me feel a bit emotional as, for me, those early-2000s V10 cars were some of the absolute peak F1 cars – really the perfect mix of being small and nimble, with relatively simple aero and of course the obnoxiously loud engines. It brought a tear to my eye to see a real F1 car, powered entirely by an engine, screaming its way around the track, thunderous cracking from the overrun etc… Those cars were brilliant and because of the way the regs worked in those days they were driven at 10 tenths the whole race. Clearly I’m a total dinosaur but as a lifelong fan I yearn for something more like this with much less artificial “enhancement” than we get these days. Progress isn’t everything…

At the start of the race, Gasly led away at turn 1 ahead of Russell. The Ferraris had a bit of a tete-a-tete in the second part of the chicane which dropped Hamilton down the order, but it was otherwise remarkably incident-free compared to the norm for Monza. Gasly soon started to come under pressure from those behind before the race was red-flagged after an unforced error from Leclerc in the Parabolica saw his Ferrari spear into the barriers, largely ending the Tifosi’s hopes for a good day for the scarlet cars. Almost unnoticed behind, Antonelli had already worked his way up to P12 and after the restart he continued to quickly work his way up through the order.

There was a bit of shuffling about with tyre wear and different energy deployment strategies but it was clear that the Mercedes were the fastest overall at the front, with Verstappen gamely hanging on behind ahead of McLaren and the sole remaining Ferrari of Hamilton. The order looked fairly nailed-down with Antonelli chasing Russell until a virtual safety car period resulted in Antonelli gambling on a second pit stop for fresh tyres making him the hare to Russell’s tortoise. He duly caught back up to his team mate and started putting him under pressure. A few laps before the end it looked like he might have blown it with an off-track excursion at the first chicane but the advantage of the fresher tyres remained and the Italian eventually passed into the lead much to the delight of the partisan crowd.

At the checquered flag it was the delighted Italian who took a home victory ahead of the dejected Russell who tried to take the positives from the event when interviewed but was clearly pretty despondent having been soundly out-raced by his team mate who essentially won by a net 20 seconds including the extra stop having started right at the back. Verstappen came home third ahead of the battling McLarens, Norris passing Piastri on the last lap for 4th. Next up was Hamilton in a disappointing 6th ahead of pole sitter Gasly who got about as much as could have been expected out of his Alpine. Rounding out the top ten were Lindblad, Colapinto and Tsunoda.

With the gap at the front now 66 points Antonelli looks pretty nailed-down for the title although I suspect that a number of the upcoming tracks will suit the Ferrari and the McLaren (particularly Singapore with lots of low-speed corners and point and squirt straights and Sepang with lots of long corners similar to Barcelona) so we’re likely to get a bit of ebb and flow as things continue to play out at the front. Next time out in just a few days’ time it’s the first event at the new Madring circuit in Madrid which looks very prone to producing a bit of upset with it’s unforgiving barriers and slippery surface, so here’s hoping it produces another interesting race to spice up the order a bit!