Five Things to Know About the Italian GP

Formula 1 visits one of the all-time great tracks on the calendar for the Italian Grand Prix this weekend, as Monza hosts Round 15 of the 2024 season.

Low-downforce setups and maximum horsepower will see F1's 20 cars racing at some of the fastest speeds this year around 3.6 miles of pure motorsport magnificence.

You're probably familiar with the track's steep banking from its history and the connections to a certain red rival of ours, but here are five things you might not already know about Monza and the Italian Grand Prix.

Franco Colapinto will become the 49th Grand Prix driver for Williams Racing* when he takes to the track this weekend, becoming just the 25th F1 racer from Argentina.

He has been a race winner in both Formula 3 and Formula 2 since he joined the Williams Racing Driver Academy in early 2023.

This won’t be his first taste of F1 machinery, having run in the Young Drivers Test at Abu Dhabi last season, followed by an FP1 outing earlier this year at Silverstone.

The 21-year-old is no stranger to the Autodromo Nazional Monza, having won three times around the 11 turns of this historic venue in junior categories.

Formula 3 concludes its 2024 season this weekend in Monza and Luke Browning is firmly in the title fight.

Our Academy racer currently sits P3 in the Championship with 123 points to his name, just six points shy of the leader heading into the final round.

The 22-year-old has already celebrated two wins and two pole positions this season, and adding to that tally at the Temple of Speed would be a serious boost to his title ambitions.

Elsewhere in the Academy, Zak O’Sullivan will return to Formula 2 action at Monza for the 11th round of his campaign.

The closest F1 finish in history could be at Monza's 1973 Italian GP when BRM's Peter Gethin pipped March's Ronnie Peterson to the win by 0.01 seconds in a frenetic ending to a flat-out 55-lap fight.

Timings down to three decimal places weren't part of the sport until the 1980s, so the controversial 2002 US Grand Prix, when Rubens Barrichello beat Michael Schumacher by 0.011s, might be closer than Gethin's triumph, but we'll never know.

However, what we do know is that no race has had the lead five cars finish tighter than that 1973 epic — the top five crossed the line with just 0.61s covering them, with Chris Amon some 32 seconds adrift in P6.

That 1973 race also held an all-time F1 record for the quickest grand prix without a red flag for 40 years — before Schumacher rewrote the history books.

Gethin's race time of 1:18:12.60 looks relatively pedestrian compared to the 1:14:19.838 Schumacher achieved in the 2003 Italian Grand Prix when he beat Juan Pablo Montoya's FW25 to victory by 5 seconds.

Italy doesn't hold the record for the shortest-ever race, though, thanks to the one-lap 2021 Belgian GP coming in at just 3:27.071s after red flags ended a soaking Sunday at Spa Francorchamps.

Goodwood might host the Festival of Speed, and Assen may claim the Cathedral of Speed title, but Monza's nickname of the Temple of Speed is perhaps the most apt moniker of them all.

This power-hungry circuit has drivers going full throttle for over 75% of any lap, and drivers regularly reach 340km/h or faster as they hurtle down to Turn 1.

Mexico's thin air and long pit straight may see the highest speed trap recordings. But Monza's nearly non-stop nature means a driver's average speed over one lap is around 250km/h — approximately 50km/h faster than a lap of Mexico City's Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.