Italian Grand Prix

Full throttle in ItalyFull throttle in Italy

2025 SEASON

Round 16 of the 2025 World Championship got underway at Autodromo Nazionale Monza, with Lance and Fernando gathering a combined total of 100 laps during Friday's sessions in the Italian sunshine. Read on for full coverage of our Italian Grand Prix weekend.

In Free Practice One, our drivers got up to speed on the Medium tyre before switching to Softs midway through.
A Red Flag due to gravel on track briefly interrupted their running, but once the session resumed, both drivers got back out on the Softs.
For his final stint of the weekend's first session, Lance switched back to Mediums. He completed a total of 26 laps during the session, with Fernando collecting information over 20 laps.
Later in the day, during FP2, both drivers continued gathering data on the Medium tyre. However, ten minutes in, a Red Flag put a brief pause to the session.
Lance and Fernando switched to Softs for 20 minutes before moving back onto the Medium tyre to conclude Friday's running.

THE LATEST FROM THE TRACK

Enter the Temple of Speed

Monza. One of the fastest circuits on the F1 calendar and one of the most historic. Minimal downforce, blistering speeds, close racing, and a fervent atmosphere created by the passionate tifosi. Lance and Fernando are looking to pick up more points for the team after finishing seventh and eighth, respectively, last time out at Zandvoort.

Monza brings to a close F1's European middle-season tour. We say goodbye to the motorhomes, engineering treehouses and trucks here, and prepare for the long-haul run-in. There's rather more of those flyaway races now than used to be the case, but the tradition of leaving Europe after Monza goes all the way back to the 1950s.

We've also got F2 and F3 parked in the support paddock immediately behind our motorhome this week. Jak Crawford is sitting second in the F2 Championship after a brace of podiums in Hungary. Meanwhile, F3 concludes at Monza. Mari Boya can't catch Rafael Câmara, so his mission this weekend is to secure the P2 he currently holds and end the season on a high. Keep scrolling for an exclusive interview with Mari, one of Spain's most promising young talents, and all you need to know this weekend.

TRACK INSIGHTS

Autodromo Nazionale MonzaAutodromo Nazionale Monza

Ascari Chicane is very difficult. It's all about the entry and braking very late. The trick is to brake late but keep momentum.

Pedro de la Rosa – Aston Martin Aramco Team Ambassador

Toggle below to highlight parts of the track.

Sectors
Turns
DRS

Circuit length (km)
5.793
Number of corners
11
Race distance (km)
306.720

NEED TO KNOW: ITALIAN GP

The essential Monza travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

Mastering Monza

The magic of racing at Monza

Strategy insights from Monza

Ultimate Italian Grand Prix facts

Last time out in Monza

The essential Monza travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

The Italian Grand Prix is F1's great immovable object. Since the inception of the World Championship in 1950, it's occupied the same weekend at the start of September – give or take a couple of days. While the leaves may be starting to turn in more northerly latitudes, in Monza there's very much a feeling of late summer: it's a nice time of year to wander the streets with an ice cream – or sit on a terrace with a glass of Barolo.

Look north from the pitlane at Monza and, on a clear day, the Alps loom in the distance, in several places marking the border between Italy and Switzerland – and nestled in the foothills are the deep blue glacial lakes of Como, Maggiore and Lugano. Since Roman times, the well-to-do have been coming here to escape the humidity of the plains. It's a little more accessible now, with the train from Monza taking 29 minutes to Como, at the southern tip of its eponymous lake's western leg. The end of summer is a great time to tour the villas, villages and ornamental gardens that fringe the lakes, and a variety of cruises crisscross them – though there's something to be said for hiring a speedboat and acting like James Bond on his day off.

For those who want to go a bit further north, the Bernina Red Train takes a panoramic tour over into Switzerland, reaching the highest point accessible by train in Europe, featuring spectacular views, and the sort of cliff-hanging railway engineering bravado that the Swiss use to terrify tourists. You'll need a strong coffee and a pastry in St Moritz to recover.

If your interests are a little more urban, then Monza, while a city in its own right, has become in essence a suburb of Milan. It is, of course, a sightseeing delight, with the Duomo, La Scala, da Vinci's The Last Supper and the Quadrilatero della moda and Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II for those in need of a high-fashion hit. And if you really, really like cars, take on a side quest to Turin for the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile. The cars are great, but the building is fantastic.

Mastering Monza

Monza's nickname is well-deserved – but The Temple of Speed is a little more subtle than its reputation would have you believe. With cars set up in a low-drag configuration featuring their characteristic ultra-skinny rear wings, the speed trap at Monza records some of the fastest end-of-straight speeds in F1… but it's often the case that speed onto the straights is the decisive factor in both attack and defence. Getting off the corners and out of the chicanes well provides an advantage all the way down the straight, which is often what wins the day, and thus presents the paradox that the slowest cars at end-of-straight are often race winners.

And so, the Italian Grand Prix really isn't a race to the bottom: low downforce certainly, but with practical considerations as well. With only Monza, Las Vegas and possibly Baku suiting the ultra-low downforce rear wing, not every team will commit the resources to making a suite of them; and not every team that builds them will choose to race them here, preferring instead to run in their Spa-Francorchamps spec to have a little more bite out of Parabolica, the Lesmos and Ascari.

While there are only six braking points around the circuit, they include some of the hardest braking events of the season, thanks to the combination of very high speeds and very tight chicanes. It's an arduous workout for the drivers' left foot – but the combination of heavy braking and low downforce also tends to destabilise the cars. Last year wasn't quite as bad as in previous years, with track resurfacing smoothing out many of the bumps… but it's still a circuit where it's very easy to miss a braking point or hit a kerb the wrong way and end up in trouble.

The other factor to consider with the high speeds is that the risk of illegality increases from excessive plank and skid wear, with the cars at 360km/h smashing into the surface with greater regularity. Naturally, teams want to get the cars as low and as stiff as possible, but there are compromises to be made in setup for the first two chicanes, Rettifilo – oxymoronically, the 'straight' chicane – and Roggia. There are kerbs to ride, and a requirement to have good traction on the exits, which in turn require a more compliant setup. Not everyone reaches the same conclusions about the best direction to take.

The magic of racing at Monza

It's surprising just how big the royal park at Monza really is. There's a lot going on, with the racetrack occupying the north-western quadrant, but elsewhere there's an international class golf course, a working farm, an international school, several historic buildings, fine dining and lots of woodland… all of which you see trying to find the fabled – and likely fictitious – easy way out in the evening. Everyone pays a visit to see the concrete banking of the old circuit – but that's about it for the history tour, there's more than enough racing to keep everyone occupied.

While Monza doesn't have many corners, they're all action zones. The first chicane tends to see the bulk of the overtaking, but there's a class system in place: cars that are closer on performance often carryover their battles to the second chicane, with the car forced to defend into the first chicane being compromised on exit. It's heart-in-the-mouth stuff through the Curva Grande with very little space before the tight, heavy braking zone for Roggia.

The third chicane – Ascari – is different in character. It's much quicker and rarely an overtaking spot, but it's a fabulous place to see F1 cars threading the eye of a needle at high-speed: the left-right-left flick has a very narrow racing line, and anyone a fraction off that line can wind up in trouble.

Parabolica is another corner more likely to see cars kicking-up dust than jostling for position. It's a good place to get a full appreciation for how fast an F1 car can go around a corner – but really, watching from here, like the grandstands opposite the pit lane, is all about soaking up the atmosphere. Believe the hype, it is genuinely special – and you don't have to be wearing red to enjoy it.

Strategy insights from Monza

The recent history of the Italian Grand Prix has been a little static, with a lot of one-stop Medium-Hard races. That was blown away last year with a strategy melee, after resurfacing work introduced question marks over graining (and whether it was a passing phase), leading to a great race where one-stoppers were being chased down in the final laps by two-stopping rivals.

The primary choice was between Medium-Hard and Medium-Hard-Hard. But it was a distinctly asymmetrical race, with the decision between one and two stops being made at the mid-point, after the first round of stops, which took place between laps 10-19 for most Medium starters, with a second stop between laps 32-38 for those struggling with graining (and convinced it wouldn't clean-up and go away).

Alternative strategies were available. Red Bull flipped theirs, running Hard-Hard-Medium. Esteban Ocon and Valtteri Bottas did a reverse one-stop of Hard-Medium, making their lone stops on laps 31 and 33 respectively. Lance was the only driver to fit a Soft tyre in the race, pitting on lap 50 for a shot at fastest lap.

Ultimate Italian Grand Prix facts

1 | The Italian Grand Prix is one of only two races ever-present on the Formula One World Championship calendar, since its inception in 1950. The other is the British Grand Prix.

2 | Monza has hosted more Formula One World Championship races than any other circuit. 74 of the 75 Italian Grands Prix have been held here, the odd one out being the race in 1980, which went to Imola. The official line is that safety improvements were being made here… though there may have been some politics as well.

3 | Lance had his first front row start here, back in 2017. He also appeared on Monza's famed podium spanning out towards the start-finish straight, when finishing third in 2020.

4 | Fernando is a double-winner at Monza, taking victory in 2007 for McLaren and 2010 for Ferrari – no prizes for guessing which one was more popular.

5 | The 1965 Italian Grand Prix has the most recorded changes of leader. In a slipstreaming race, P1 changed hands 41 times.

6 | The 1971 race is probably the all-time closest finish. The first five cars over the line were covered by 0.61 seconds. Peter Gethin beat Ronnie Peterson by 0.01s. Timing was only recorded to two decimal places in ’71. The 2002 US Grand Prix had a Ferrari formation finish recorded at 0.011s.

7 | This is the home of speed records. Michael Schumacher in 2003 has the highest average race speed, completing the race at 247.586km/h; Rubens Barrichello in the same race has the highest average speed for a fastest lap at 257.321k/h, while Lewis Hamilton in 2021 did the fastest lap of a racetrack during Qualifying, at 264.362km/h.

Last time out in Monza

We first contested the Italian Grand Prix in 1959, when it was the eighth of nine races – or seventh of eight if you choose to discount the Indy 500, with Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby driving the DBR4. The pair qualified 17th and 19th, respectively. Salvadori retired with an engine failure, while running seventh, while Shelby went on to finish P10.

Our return to Monza in 2021 was the second race to use the Sprint Qualifying format. During Friday's standard Qualifying session, Sebastian Vettel was 11th and Lance 12th, with Lance moving up to P10 and Seb down to P12 after the 18-lap Sprint. Seb stayed where he started, but a good race for Lance, from P9 on the grid, saw him move up to P7 by the Grand Prix chequered flag.

2022 was a good race for a pub quiz, with Nyck De Vries doing a great job for us with 22 laps in FP1, replacing Seb in one of our mandatory rookie slots. The Dutchman then spent the rest of the weekend in blue, making his F1 race debut with Williams, after Alexander Albon was rushed to hospital for an appendectomy. Seb and Lance qualified 11th and 12th, respectively, but both went out with power unit failures.

2023 was something of a mixed bag, with Lance qualifying P20 but Fernando making it through to Q3. With little strategic variance in the race and no interruptions, there wasn't a great deal happening. Lance made it up to P16 and Fernando finished P9. Last year was similar: P11 and P17 on the grid for Fernando and Lance, respectively, was converted into P11 and P19 on Sunday.

Session Times

FP1

Fri5SEP

12:30-13:30 BST

FP2

Fri5SEP

16:00-17:00 BST

FP3

Sat6SEP

11:30-12:30 BST

Quali

Sat6SEP

15:00-16:00 BST

Race

Sun7SEP

14:00 BST

Talking Points

Ready for the Formula 3 finale

Aston Martin Aramco Driver Academy member Mari Boya talks us through his Formula 3 season ahead of the concluding round at Monza this weekend.

2025 Italian GP Talking Points list image

Glenfiddich

Craft meets instinct

Glenfiddich, the world's most awarded Scotch whisky, has debuted two limited-edition bottlings to celebrate its partnership with our team: a 16-Year-Old and 19-Year-Old Single Malt embodying the essence of two timeless brands.

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