Ferrari's Chance at Monza: Upgraded Engine and High Expectations
Lewis Hamilton arrived at Monza talking about numbers – engine tokens, grid penalties, lap-time deficits – but his eyes gave away something else entirely. This weekend is about emotion. Ferrari emotion. Monza emotion.
And a rare chance.
Ferrari roll the dice at home
Ferrari have chosen their home grand prix to unleash the second and final engine upgrade of the season, a power unit designed to claw back the straight-line speed that has stalked them all year.
In the corners, the red car has often been the class of the field. On the straights, it has been exposed.
“Until this point of the year, even last race, we were losing 0.4secs a lap on the straights. We have carried that deficit,” Hamilton said. “This is a step forward. It is not the whole amount we need but we knew that was the case. I strongly believe we have what it takes to win.”
That belief is not blind. Ferrari know exactly what they are getting from this upgrade. It will not magically erase Mercedes’ power advantage, but it narrows the gap on the one circuit where straight-line speed is almost a religion.
Monza is Ferrari’s cathedral. They have chosen to pray with a new engine.
A first at Monza on the line
Hamilton has won almost everywhere. He has already ticked off his first Ferrari victory this season. But there is a very specific “first” on his mind this week.
“There is a first ahead of me, in the sense of if I was to win I go into new territory winning for the first time in Ferrari at Monza. It would be phenomenal,” he said.
The task is clear. The margin for error is not.
“To win this weekend, the whole collective has to come together. Everything has to flow from the beginning.”
This is not just any race for Ferrari staff. Many of them will line the garage, the pit wall, the hospitality units, surrounded by the deafening red tide of tifosi. The expectation is suffocating and addictive in equal measure.
“The pressure’s high. You want to do it for the team. Many of them will come to this race. The tifosi come out in huge numbers with a passion that's unmatched,” Hamilton said.
Then he added a more personal twist.
“And my mum's here. I don't think she's been to Monza, and certainly not with Ferrari. I wanted her to experience this and bring any lucky dust she can bring.”
An upgraded engine, 100,000 tifosi, and Hamilton’s mother in the paddock. For Ferrari, if not now, when?
Antonelli starts at the back – but not out of the picture
The answer to that question, as ever this season, has a lot to do with Kimi Antonelli.
The Mercedes driver leads the championship, and he will start the Italian Grand Prix from the back after exceeding his allocation of four engines for the year. Reliability problems earlier in the season made this penalty inevitable. Mercedes have simply chosen Monza as the moment to take the hit.
Strategically, it makes sense. New power unit. Straight-line-heavy circuit. A long season still to manage.
Hamilton, 59 points behind Antonelli in the standings, knows the opportunity but refuses to kid himself about the scale of it.
“There is big gap between the top teams and the rest. Kimi will start from the back but with the power he has, and the performance he has, he should slide through that pack pretty easy and it's probably why they chose this race to do that,” he said.
“So achieving eighth or sixth should be relatively easy. We have to focus on maximising our weekend and try and take the energy from the tifosi to hopefully push us to the front.”
Mercedes have split their pain. Antonelli serves his penalty here; George Russell is expected to do the same in Azerbaijan in two races’ time. It is cold, calculated championship management.
Antonelli, though, is treating Monza as something else.
“I am very much looking forward to this weekend despite starting from the back. I will be able to enjoy it more than I did previously and hopefully we will still be able to have a good race,” he said.
“In some ways it helps to release pressure, although I would very much rather fight for pole and start at the front.”
He knows the car. He knows the circuit. He also knows he will not be alone at the front when he gets there.
“I think this track can be very good for us but we have to take into account that McLaren, Ferrari, even Red Bull can be good this weekend.”
A different kind of Monza challenge
This year’s Italian Grand Prix will not only be about raw power. It will be about energy – and the lack of it.
Monza’s long straights and heavy braking zones turn hybrid management into a chess match. The cars spend a higher percentage of the lap without battery deployment here than at most circuits. The energy recovery zones are limited, the demands relentless.
Antonelli called it “very energy starved”, a phrase that will echo through every pre-race debrief.
“There are other tracks where it is possible to overtake but this one is very energy starved and there are a lot of places where you can race differently and it gives us the best chance to climb through the field,” he said.
Slipstreaming will not be a side story; it will be the story. Drivers expect trains in qualifying, frustration in traffic, and a premium on track position that might look old-school, even by Monza’s standards.
Antonelli predicted speeds would “flat-line” on the straights, but not fall away dramatically, and believes the scenario will be “better than many expected”. That is a hint that Mercedes see opportunity where others see limitation.
For Hamilton and Ferrari, the equation is simpler. They finally have more power. They have a car that dances through the chicanes. They have their home race, their fans, their noise.
They also have the world champion starting at the back in a car that usually disappears up the road.
Upgraded engine or not, this is the kind of weekend that can tilt a season – or leave Ferrari staring at the same old questions under the same old Monza sky.
