Much of the buzz comes from the tens of thousands of noisy tifosi cheering on “the other Italian team” but there were plenty of VCARB fans making their support felt from the grandstands.
How to describe the Monza paddock? It’s a cross between Milan Fashion Week and a fiendish “Where’s Wally?” puzzle-book, or “Where’s Waldo?” if you’re reading this in the USA. How so many people get paddock passes for this event is one of the great motor racing mysteries. Plenty of our factory-based staff were there and we were delighted to welcome our former Team Principal Franz Tost among our guests.
Apart from this being a second home race for us after Imola, Monza holds special memories as the venue of our two Formula 1 victories to date, in 2008, courtesy of Sebastian Vettel and in 2020 with Pierre Gasly. Daniel has also made it to the top step of the marvellous Monza podium when he won for McLaren in 2021.
Our trucks came here straight from the previous Sunday’s race at Zandvoort and the mechanics set about the usual car preparation. It was a more complex task than usual, because our aggressive car development programme meant that an update package due to be introduced in a fortnight’s time at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was ready ahead of schedule. Only one kit of parts has been manufactured so far and the decision was taken to fit these to Yuki’s car, combined with the usual very low downforce configuration required for this the fastest track on the calendar.
On Friday, Daniel was happy with his car and finished a strong eighth fastest. As for Yuki, although the new parts were delivering the expected numbers in terms of aero downforce, the balance of the car wasn’t quite right. For Saturday’s qualifying that performance difference continued with Daniel just missing out on the cut to Q3 by a few hundredths of a second to claim 12th spot on the grid, while Yuki struggled to find pace and was 16th.
On Sunday, the atmosphere was electric as the partisan crowd sensed a Ferrari win was in the offing. Our race however unfortunately offered little to cheer about. Early on, Daniel was given a five second penalty for causing a collision with Nico Hulkenberg and, even though our pit stops have generally been top notch this season, a slight error when a mechanic accidentally touched the car before the 5 seconds was up, meant Daniel was given a further 10 second penalty. It ruined his race, but as he honestly admitted, he didn’t have the pace for a points finish on Sunday. Not long after, Hulkenberg then drove into Yuki, badly damaging the floor on the VCARB 01 and we had to call him into the pits to retire the car.
Now, we’re staying in Monza to help Pirelli with a day’s testing of their 2025 tyres on Wednesday, which will give us some more valuable mileage to get a better understanding of our latest upgrade package, while back in the factory we’ll be studying the data in preparation for the Azerbaijan GP in a fortnight’s time. We have gone well at the Baku street circuit in recent years, often in the points and even, in 2021, on the podium. The summer races have not gone as well as we had hoped but we will be fighting hard to reassert ourselves at the front end of the mid-field as Formula 1 now bids farewell to Europe for another year, heading off to Asia, the Americas and the Gulf states.
