Author: Miles Fast

Kimi Antonelli stood atop the Monza podium, wrapped in Mercedes silver and soaking in cheers from a sea of Ferrari red. Down below, Lewis Hamilton sifted through the wreckage of a brutal sixth-place finish and a season slipping beyond his reach. This should have been Ferrari’s day. Red smoke curled above the grandstands. Flags snapped in the warm air. More than 403,000 fans had poured through Monza’s gates across the weekend, ready to watch Hamilton chase history in scarlet. Instead, they saw Charles Leclerc force his teammate into the gravel at the first chicane. Two laps later, Leclerc buried the…

Red smoke hung above the main straight, and Monza’s old grandstands shook with a noise this park had not heard in six decades. Beneath the chaos, a 20-year-old Italian in a silver Mercedes had just pulled off the impossible. Two hours earlier, victory for Kimi Antonelli seemed laughable. An engine penalty had dropped the championship leader from seventh to 19th on the grid. George Russell, his teammate and closest title rival, started alongside shock polesitter Pierre Gasly on the front row. The afternoon brought another complication. Temperatures above 31 degrees Celsius prompted the FIA to activate its heat-hazard protocol. Cockpits…

Friday practice promised a Ferrari coronation. By Saturday afternoon, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were simply trying to survive. They escaped Q2 by a combined nine-thousandths of a second as a battery problem and confused run plan tore through Ferrari’s Monza strategy. Hamilton reached Q3 by 0.001 seconds over Gabriel Bortoleto. Leclerc finished only 0.008 seconds above the cutoff. A team that had opened the weekend with a one-two suddenly looked vulnerable against an Audi expected to struggle at Formula 1’s fastest circuit. The recovery brought Leclerc fourth in 1:22.004, with Hamilton seven-thousandths behind in fifth. Oscar Piastri’s three-place penalty…

Max Verstappen knew his qualifying lap was in trouble before the stopwatch confirmed it. As his Red Bull hammered across Monza’s opening chicane, the rear refused to absorb the kerbs. The car struck one ridge, bounced toward the next, and pushed wide as Verstappen waited for the front tires to bite. That ugly stiffness felt painfully familiar. “The car is broken on the rear axle again,” Verstappen warned over the radio during Q2. He described the RB22 as “really undriveable” through Turns 2, 4, and 5, three corners where confidence over the kerbs determines speed along the following straights. Still,…

Fernando Alonso still trusts Honda, even after Monza exposed the painful distance between Aston Martin’s ambition and its current reality. Speed should feel effortless beneath these trees. Instead, Alonso spent Friday fighting vibrations, fading acceleration, and a car that looked exhausted before reaching the braking zone. The timing screen supplied the shock. Alonso finished FP2 in 19th place, 2.468 seconds behind George Russell’s Mercedes. He climbed from the cockpit and did precisely what few expected: he defended Honda. Practice times require caution. Fuel loads, tire programs, traffic, and engine modes can distort every comparison. Aston Martin also spent Friday testing…

For over a decade, Lewis Hamilton came to Monza to break Ferrari hearts. Now, wearing the prancing horse on his chest, he wants to make them beat faster. The difference lives in the noise. Ferrari flags snap above the fencing. Air horns punch through the heat. Every glimpse of the red No. 44 sends another wave rolling across the grandstands. Hamilton owns 104 Formula 1 pole positions, more than any driver in history. None came for Ferrari. A Ferrari pole at Monza would fill that glaring blank while placing him at the center of one of motorsport’s most emotional rituals.…

The McLaren F1 upgrade will ask Lando Norris to trust a moving piece of carbon fiber at 350 kph. He will not see the rear wing rotate from the cockpit. Instead, he will feel what happens when it closes. At Monza, that distinction could decide the weekend. The MCL40 will tear down the main straight with its upper rear-wing element flipped upside down. Then the braking boards will rush toward Norris’s visor. In that moment, the wing must return, the rear tires must bite, and the car must stay beneath him. There can be no pause. No second attempt. McLaren…

Long before Sebastian Vettel flashes past in Michael Schumacher’s F2002 on Sunday, Monza’s grandstands will hear the car coming. The sound will begin beyond the trees, faint at first, then rise into a metallic shriek. A naturally aspirated V10 does not hum. It tears through the air. Vettel will drive one ceremonial lap before the Italian Grand Prix, sliding into the car Schumacher used to crush the 2002 field. Rubens Barrichello will drive the same machine after qualifying on Saturday. By Sunday morning, the mood will change. Qualifying tension will give way to the nervous energy of race day, with…

Liam Lawson was supposed to be a footnote this season. Then Isack Hadjar injured his wrist, and the Red Bull cockpit Lawson lost in 2025 suddenly opened again. The New Zealander reached Zandvoort with one simulator day and no RB22 track mileage. A foreign steering wheel. The Sprint format refused to slow down. He still reached Q3. Lawson’s final lap stopped the clock at 1:11.733, just 0.115 seconds behind Max Verstappen in the same session. Sunday turned vicious. Damp patches blackened the asphalt, Verstappen’s rear tyres snapped loose at Turn 14, and carbon fibre burst across Lawson’s view. He missed…

Ferrari’s Monza upgrades cannot lean on sentiment, because sentiment does not make a Formula 1 car faster. When Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc fire up their SF-26s on Friday, the Tifosi will listen for something more convincing than noise. They want proof. Ferrari has brought a heavily revised power unit, a stripped-back floor and a lower-drag rear-wing configuration to the Italian Grand Prix. Under the engine cover, engineers have changed the combustion chamber and turbocharger. Shell developed a new fuel mix to help extract more from that hardware. Along the floor, Ferrari has removed aerodynamic complexity to cut drag. At…