Italian GP at the Parco di Monza - the track for the fastest Grand Prix
One of the last great motorsport classics of all time is taking place today. The Italian GP in Monza is now the oldest race track in the world on which F1 World Championship races are held.
It was built in 1922 by around 3,500 workers. In no other country have all F1 World Championship races been held on the same circuit since the beginning. Monza has almost managed it, with the exception of Imola in 1980 due to reconstruction work.
Monza still holds the record for the fastest and therefore shortest Grand Prix over the full distance.
In 2003, Michael Schumacher won despite all the chicanes, with an average of 247.585k m/h in 1 hour 14 minutes and 19.838 seconds.
Around 77 percent of the lap is driven at full throttle. The last victory by an Italian in a Ferrari dates back to 1966, when Ludovico Scarfiotti was the successful driver. It is almost certain that Italian fans will have to wait another year for a complete Italian victory.
Only the Italian and British F1 World Championship races have been held without interruption since 1950.
Not only did the fastest and shortest GP take place in Monza, no, the closest of all decisions also took place at the finish line in the Parco di Monza. In 1971, Peter Gethin won by just a single hundredth of a second ahead of Ronnie Peterson. Another three cars crossed the finish line within 61 hundredths of a second of each other.
The absolute top speed in F1, driven by Juan Pablo Montoya in a McLaren, dates back to 2005 and is 372.5 km/h.
This absolute high-speed circuit challenges the aerodynamics of the F1 cars every year. The front and rear wings are tiny and flat and are specially designed for Monza in the wind tunnel. In 1970, Lotus even tried to drive completely without wings, which ended in the fatal accident of Jochen Rindt. However, the exact cause of the accident could never be proven. Incidentally, last Friday was the 44th anniversary of this accident.
That brings us to the negative headlines from the race track: The fatal accident involving Count Berghe von Trips in a Ferrari in 1961, following a collision with Jim Clark in a Lotus, was the biggest disaster in the Grand Prix circus with 15 dead fans.
The exceptional Swedish talent Ronnie Peterson also paid with his life in a collision at the start on the narrowing start-finish straight on September 11, 1978.
The narrowing start-finish straight dates back to 1955, when the straight was driven through twice per lap, as the current track variant was still connected to the newly built oval via the two banked corners. In 1955/56 and 1960/61, the GP was run over this double lap. The sports cars later used this variant four more times (1965-69) in the traditional 1000 km race.
A small side note: I have been photographing the GP in Monza for the 38th time since 1976 (as already mentioned, the GP was held in Imola in 1980) and my father started at Monza back in 1958. With a few overlaps where we were together, I am now photographing the 64th GP for our family archive for the 56th time.
