Legendary Monza – is it really one of F1's greatest circuits?

F1

Monza is now a century old – it's no doubt holy ground for F1, but is it one of the great tracks?

Eddie-Irvina-at-the-1998-Italian-GP

Monza at 100 – a legendary venue, but does it make for a great track?

Paul-Henri Cahier/Getty Images

Andrew Frankel

Among the circuits still used for Grand Prix racing today, none has more claims to fame than Monza. It has, just for a start, hosted its country’s top motor race more times than any other facility in the world. Indeed since the inaugural season of the Formula 1 driver’s world championship, the Italian Grand Prix has taken place at Monza on all bar one occasion when, in 1980 it decamped to Imola while Monza was being refurbished. Since it opened its doors exactly 100 years ago in 1922, there have been just two other occasions when the Italian GP was held elsewhere (1937 in Livorno and 1938 in Turin as you’re asking).

It was the fastest world championship F1 circuit when first used in 1950 (excepting the Indianapolis red herring, when it was included in the championship from 1950-’60), and it remains so today. Lewis Hamilton’s pole lap there in 2020 is still the fastest lap ever completed over an F1 weekend at 164.267mph.

Monza is the oldest purpose built race track in Europe still used today and globally is beaten only by the Brickyard. It was not the only F1 circuit to make extensive use of proper banking – rather than gently banked corners – as the AVUS did so on its one and mercifully only appearance on the calendar in 1959, but it is the only one where it has been used with any regularity, four times indeed between 1955-56 and 1960-61.

1955-Italian-GP

F1 cars running on the fearsome banking in 1955

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Of the six closest finishes in F1 history not involving cars from the same team, half came at Monza, including the closest of all, in 1971 when Peter Gethin beat Ronnie Peterson by a single hundredth of a second in a race which saw the top four breast the line within 0.2sec of each other.

Tragically there have also been more fatalities at Monza than anywhere else still used by F1 today: 52 drivers and 35 spectators in the last century. Nowhere else have more internationally famous racing drivers ended their lives than here: Ugo Sivocci was the first in 1923, followed by Count Louis Zborowski the next year. In 1928 Emilio Materassi’s Talbot got into the crowd, killing him and 21 spectators in what remains the worst accident in Grand Prix racing, then Baconin Borzacchini, Giuseppe Campari and Stanislaw Czaykowski all died on the same dreadful day in 1933. In the world championship era, the names of Alberto Ascari, Wolfgang von Trips, Jochen Rindt and Ronnie Peterson need no further introduction from me. Von Trips’ accident which also claimed the lives of 15 spectators is the worst in F1 history.

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I think what strikes me most when I visit Monza, or just watch the race on the television, is that for all the changes that have been made there, how little it has altered. Compare a diagram of the track in 1922 and another of how it is today and you’ll be stunned by their similarities. True, the banking is no longer used but it’s still there, while the Rettifilo, della Roggia and Ascari chicanes that have been added do little alter the layout of the track. Even Monaco is far more changed from its original form, while Silverstone and Spa – the only other circuits from the birth of the F1 championship still in use today – are barely recognisable.

And I guess because its essential character remains, of all the circuits I’ve visited, it’s the one where the ghosts most readily come out to meet you. Wander around the banking, goggling at the idea of Formula 1 cars actually racing here, and I think of Stirling in the moment where the steering of his Eldorado Special snapped during the 1958 ‘Race of Two Worlds’ or ‘Monzanapolis’. Although he emerged unharmed, to the end of his life he maintained that the feeling of utter helplessness, up there without steering at 160mph, was the most frightening experience he ever had in a racing car. And he had a few.

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Alberto Ascari, one of many drivers killed at Monza, celebrates his 1951 Italian GP win

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Yet ask me to name my ten favourite circuits and Monza would not be among them. I’m sure they’re out there, but I’ve never met a driver who’s said it’s the place he or she looks forward to driving most. Go online and look for polls for the greatest ever F1 race and of the few that name Monza, almost all point to that 1971 slip-streamer, achieved in an era when F1 cars had little to no downforce compared to what we see today.

It’s hard to put a finger on why. The place is awash with history, you can overtake and it’s not exactly short of quick corners, indeed the Parabolica is one of the great remaining challenges now so many other famous corners used by modern Formula racing cars – including Monza’s own Curva Grande – are no more than extensions of the straights that they connect. And if only all chicanes were as fast and required the same level of commitment as Ascari.

And yet something is missing. There’s essentially no gradient such as you find at Spa, nor are there any epic corner combinations like those you which make Silverstone such a challenge. But I think the real problem with Monza is that, chicanes aside, it only has three corners: the Parabolica, and the two Lesmos. Call it four if you include Ascari. Depending on how you count, Spa has around 16, Silverstone as many as 18. Monza by comparison is a series of long straights connected by a very small number of individual corners and, in their absence, broken by up artificial chicanes. Dare I say it, but compared to the truly great circuits, it’s just a little bit dull.

Heresy? Probably, and I’d hate to see it removed, not just for the history but for the fact that there really is nowhere else like it, no other circuit where the cars run so trimmed out; unquestionably it provides a certain sort of challenge to the teams and drivers they won’t find elsewhere.

Tifosi-at-the-Italian-GP

The Tifosi only want to see one thing

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Finally of course, there is the real reason I suspect Monza has held more F1 races than any other circuit and why it will stay on the calendar for as long as a certain team remains in the sport: the tifosi. There is no crowd more partisan or passionate than this, a human sea of red united in their desire to see one thing and one thing only: a victory for the Scuderia. If they pull it off this weekend in Monza’s centenary year, it will be the 20th for Ferrari in the world championship era – wildly more than anyone else – and the Tifosi will go mad with joy. If, by contrast, Ferrari has the means to win but throws it away yet again, all the pressure soaked up by team principal Mattia Binotto so far this year will be as nothing compared to what the tifosi and Italian press will then load onto his shoulders. Ferrari fans all over the world will be crossing every finger hoping that that does not happen. But none more than those at Monza.

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