Monza and the Italian Grand Prix: Why F1's Fastest Race Is Also Its Most Emotional

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Formula 1 Race Preview. There is no Grand Prix this weekend, so this is a between-races feature on the track everyone is heading to next: Monza.

The Short Version

Formula 1 is off this weekend. The next race is the Italian Grand Prix at Monza on Sunday, September 6, 53 laps around a 5.793-kilometer circuit, green at 9:00 a.m. ET. Monza is the fastest permanent track F1 races on and one of the oldest purpose-built circuits in the world. It is also Ferrari's home race, which is why it produces scenes no other weekend does. Here is why this place matters, told through the races that made it.

The Temple of Speed Is Not a Nickname Someone Made Up

Monza opened in 1922, built inside a royal park north of Milan by the Automobile Club di Milano. The whole thing went up in about 110 days. It was a road course plus a banked oval, and for decades cars ran both. That old banking is still standing in the trees, crumbling, and fans still walk out to look at it.

What is left today is short on corners and long on straights. Drivers spend most of the lap flat out, and the cars run the smallest wings they will use all season. That is the trade at Monza. You give up cornering grip to go faster everywhere else, then you have to stop the car at the end of a straight you arrived down quicker than anywhere on the calendar.

The speed shows up in the record book. Max Verstappen won here in 2025 at an average of 250.706 km/h, the fastest world championship Grand Prix in Formula 1 history. The record he broke was set at the same track by Michael Schumacher in 2003. In 54 years, the fastest-race record has only changed hands twice, and both times it happened at Monza.

The Closest Finish in F1 History Happened Here

In 1971 the track had no chicanes. Cars ran nose to tail in a giant slipstreaming pack and swapped the lead constantly. Peter Gethin started 11th, came out of the last corner in the middle of a five-car blanket, and won by 0.01 seconds over Ronnie Peterson. The top five finished within 0.61 seconds of each other. It is still the closest finish in Formula 1 history, and it was the only Grand Prix win of Gethin's career.

The chicanes went in soon after for safety reasons. But that race is why Monza has the reputation it does. This is the track where a driver with no business winning ends up in the right place at the right moment.

Ferrari, the Tifosi, and the Two Races That Explain Them

Ferrari has won the Italian Grand Prix 21 times, more than any other team has won at Monza. The tifosi treat it like a national holiday. Two races tell you why.

Enzo Ferrari died on August 14, 1988, at 90 years old. Four weeks later F1 came to Monza. McLaren-Honda had won every race that season and would win 15 of 16. At Monza, Alain Prost's engine let go and Ayrton Senna tangled with a backmarker two laps from the end. Gerhard Berger and Michele Alboreto came through for a Ferrari one-two in the first Italian Grand Prix without the man who built the team. It is the only race McLaren lost that year.

Then 2019. Ferrari had not won its home race since Fernando Alonso in 2010. Charles Leclerc, 21 and in his first year with the team, held off Lewis Hamilton and then Valtteri Bottas lap after lap and ended the nine-year wait. The crowd came over the fences and filled the straight. Leclerc won it again in 2024.

The Record Nobody Talks About

Only two drivers have won the Italian Grand Prix five times: Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton. Schumacher did all five in a Ferrari. Hamilton did his in a McLaren in 2012 and a Mercedes in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018. He is now in year two at Ferrari, and he took his first win for the team earlier this season in Barcelona.

So the math is simple. A win at Monza makes Hamilton the outright record holder at the Italian Grand Prix, and he would do it in the car Schumacher set the record in. He sits third in the standings on 183 points, level with George Russell and 59 behind Kimi Antonelli. Ferrari is second in the constructors' championship on 338 points. That is a real chance, not a nice story.

What the 2026 Cars Do to the Fastest Track

This is the first Italian Grand Prix under the new rules, and Monza is the track everyone has been worried about. The 2026 power units split their output roughly 50-50 between the engine and the electric side, and the cars use moving front and rear wings that flatten out on the straights and load back up for the corners. That works fine at a normal circuit. Monza is not a normal circuit.

The problem is recharging. Batteries refill mostly under braking, and Monza barely has any braking. Teams have spent a year warning that cars could run out of deployment partway down a straight. Verstappen described it after simulator running: at Monza you end up shifting up early and backing off before the straight ends, because that is the quicker way around. The FIA has room to lower the recharge limit at tracks like this one. Nobody knows yet how it looks on television, and that is worth tuning in for on its own.

Monza Secures Three-Year Deal for Sprint Format Starting 2027: The Monza National Racetrack is undergoing significant upgrades, including improvements to the pit building, Media Center, hospitality, and Race Management.

- This is Formula 1 (@ThisIsFormu1a1) July 7, 2026

Monza is not going anywhere either. The race is contracted through at least 2031, the circuit is being upgraded, and a sprint format arrives in 2027. It has hosted the Italian Grand Prix every championship season since 1950 except one, when the 1980 race went to Imola while Monza was rebuilt.

The Bottom Line

Monza is where Formula 1 goes fastest and feels the most. The closest finish in the sport's history happened there, the fastest race ever run happened there, and the loudest crowd in racing shows up every September to watch one team. On September 6 all of that is on the line again, with a new set of rules that nobody has tested here yet.

Shop Formula 1 Gear

If you are picking a side for Monza, here is what is in stock:

• Scuderia Ferrari Garage Crew T-Shirt - the obvious one for the tifosi weekend.
• Mercedes-AMG Petronas x Mad Dog Jones Hamilton Ball Cap - from Hamilton's Mercedes run, when four of his five Monza wins came.
• McLaren F1 New Era 9Fifty Camo Hat - for the Norris side of the room.
• Formula 1 Tech Limited Edition Belgian GP Hat - neutral, if you just like the sport.

More caps are in the F1 hats collection. Everything is one-off, so when a size is gone it is gone.