The Italian Grand Prix is one of the most historic on the calendar, given that it’s held a place on it since the first championship year in 1950, and even before. While F1 now goes racing on a 5.793-kilometre long track, in Monza’s early years the grands prix took place on a mighty 10-kilometre circuit featuring two banked corners.

This early layout, used for championship grands prix in 1955, 1956, 1960 and 1961, was created by combining the Pista di Alta Velocita (a 4.25-kilometre long oval that featured the banked turns) and much of the circuit we know today, known as the road course. Drivers would run parallel to each other down the main straight before those on the right peeled off to take the banked turn of Curva Nord, while those on the left continued down into the Curva Grande (turn 3 of today’s layout).

But limited safety measures, high speeds, and high stress levels on components like suspension and the tyres meant there were several incidents, crashes and fatalities over these four grands prix. It’s what prompted the return to solely using the road course, or current circuit, from 1962.

While much of the layout remains the same, there have been modifications made to it in the name of safety – run off extensions, gravel trap additions and chicane alterations were all made to create the track F1 goes racing on today.

Characteristics Considerations

Power Sensitivity

What has remained from Monza’s first races to now is its high speed nature, not only for top speed, but also average speed over a lap. Its long straights, few high speed corners and fewer slow-speed chicanes mean that the drivers are running at full throttle for around 80% of the lap – making it a power sensitive circuit. Power unit reliability and strength are therefore vital variables here, and can result in a small spread of performance from the strongest to the weakest. It can also result in teams opting to switch their car’s power units either for one from their pool of four for the season that has lower mileage, or taking a new one outside of this pool – incurring a penalty.

Aerodynamic Efficiency

But the main talking point in Monza is drag – and the lack of it. It’s a circuit where straight line speed has a huge impact on outright lap time, and so teams opt to reduce the level of drag they’re running as efficiently as possible. While this therefore results in a reduction in downforce, holding onto a level of that remains important for the high-speed corners and for stability through the chicanes too. In other words, it’s all about maximising aerodynamic efficiency – keeping downforce with the least amount of drag possible.

How teams achieve that high level of efficiency and their ideal balance can look different – some may trim off their rear wing angle significantly to cut drag down and sacrifice the downforce too, while others may retain a ‘spoon’ curve to the wing to efficiently retain some downforce and find a compromise between it and drag.

Monza is fairly unique in these demands and so, in the cost-cap era, it can be rare for teams to build a bespoke low-drag package given that it’s for just a one-off race. And that means they may adapt an existing lower, not ultra-low, drag wing (as Red Bull did last year by getting the dremel out), or they might re-use a package from a previous year.

The Power of a Tow

Getting a tow, or slipstream, from a car in front can be incredibly powerful in Monza particularly down the main straight; providing a boost to the car behind’s top speed as the car in front cuts a hole in the air for it, reducing the drag it experiences.

The boost this brings can be significant and consequential come qualifying particularly, and so teams will often engineer their run plans to allow a driver a chance at giving and receiving a tow from their teammate. Executing one perfectly isn’t easy, but Monza’s short lap time can make the choreography simpler than elsewhere. It’s also a circuit, due to its power sensitivity, where some drivers take their power unit penalty to fit an entirely new engine. If a team has one penalised driver and one who’s not, expect the penalised driver to be sacrificed in qualifying to tow the other.

Braking

Braking is severe in Monza – it’s one of the most demanding circuits for the brakes on the entire calendar even though there are relatively few braking zones. And that is down to the high contrast between the speeds carried down the straights and the speed needed through the chicanes that separate them. That not only puts demand on the braking system itself, but also on the drivers, and lock-ups can be common particularly early on in the weekend.

According to data from Brembo, the cars arrive at the first braking point at ~337km/h and slow to 89km/h subjecting them, and the drivers, to near instant deceleration of around 5g. But each hard braking zone around the lap involves deceleration of at least 3.8g.

This of course generates a significant level of heat but the long straights help the brakes cool down in between the braking zones, helping to prevent issues with overheating.

The Compounds

Pirelli arrive in Monza not only continuing their celebrations of their 500th grand prix, but also armed with the same compound selection as last year. It leans towards the softer side of the range and the C3 will be the hard, the C4 the medium, and C5 the soft.

The circuit was resurfaced ahead of 2024’s running and while its expected to have aged in the last twelve months, Pirelli aren’t anticipating any dramatic changes or effects of this on the tyre behaviour or strategic choices taken by the teams.

The typical of which is the one-stop using the medium and hard compounds, in fact, the soft only covered 1% of laps in last year’s grand prix. Fourteen drivers chose to start the race on the medium tyre, while six ran the hard for the opening stint. The new, darker track surface coupled with higher track temperatures made graining significant, especially over the first part of the race, and it tipped nine drivers into boxing earlier and committing to the two-stop. However, given that the graining dropped off as the race progressed, sticking it out on the one-stop didn’t carry too much of a penalty in pace and actually was what won the one-stopping Charles Leclerc the race versus the two-stopping McLarens.

This year however, the one-stop is expected to be followed by the majority. The weather will be cooler, the track has now rubbered in more, and these two factors mean graining should clear faster or be lower to begin with.

The time-loss for a pitstop in Monza is also a factor that pushes the teams towards a one-stop given that it’s one of the largest of the year, owing to the big difference between the on track speeds (over 350km/h) and those taken through the pit lane (80km/h). It means under green flag conditions, drivers will lose around 24 seconds to a pitstop, while under a safety car this reduces to 15 seconds. And safety cars aren’t uncommon in Monza given how close the gravel traps are around the lap (50% rate over the last 8 GPs) so it could be a key factor in giving rise to some strategic variation on Sunday. Expect teams to hang onto an extra set of new mediums or hards in their race day allocations to take advantage of any circumstances that arise!

The Weather

As things stand, the weather is likely to play much less of a role this weekend than it did last time out in Zandvoort. It is however going to be warm, with temperatures exceeding 27°C everyday. There is a small chance of rain early on Friday morning, prior to F1’s sessions, which is therefore unlikely to have a major role in track evolution or condition given that the circuit will be green for Formula 1 anyway.

The Italian Grand Prix begins with Free Practice 1 at 13:30pm local time on Friday September 5th. The rest of the timings for the weekend are as follows (all in local time):

• FP1: Friday 5th September, 13:30-14:30
• FP2: Friday 5th September, 17:00-18:00
• FP3: Saturday 6th September, 12:30-13:30
• Qualifying: Saturday 6th September, 16:00-17:00
• Italian Grand Prix: Sunday 7th September, 15:00