The magic of Monza

For me, the Italian GP at Monza is one of the best races on the calendar. Even with the Covid situation you still feel the special atmosphere here – it has a real sense of energy and history.

It’s a unique track, where we run the car in a set-up window we don’t run anywhere else, with the lowest downforce, lowest drag settings.
Basically the car feels like it’s always skating across the tarmac and on the very fast flowing corners it doesn’t have the load to really stick.

Add to that very heavy braking zones, going from top, top speed to maybe one of the slowest sections of the year. For me, the challenge makes it incredible to drive.

Monza is also the second race this year where we’ll trial the sprint qualifying format. I really enjoyed it at Silverstone, the challenge of having just one practice to dial everything in and get up to speed before qualifying.

That means two races this weekend and as a team we have some interesting things to try that we didn’t have last year. I’m feeling optimistic that we can improve on last year’s decent result.

Monza has all the makings of an exciting weekend, and an opportunity to round off this triple header of F1 races on a high.