Monza does not do quiet weekends. Cars touch 260km/h on average here with full throttle for 80% of the lap. This year’s Italian Grand Prix arrives with three separate title fights riding on that speed. F1, F2 and F3 all race at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza from 4 to 6 September. For once, none of the three championships is close to decided.
F1: Antonelli’s cushion meets Ferrari’s crowd
Kimi Antonelli leads the F1 world championship by 59 points after Zandvoort. George Russell and Lewis Hamilton are locked together on 183 apiece. It is a commanding lead for a 19-year-old in his first full season, built on consistency and dominance.
Behind the top three, Lando Norris has quietly put himself back in the conversation. Back-to-back wins either side of the summer break, at the Hungaroring and then at Zandvoort, have pushed him to 159 points. His title hopes are faint, but they are not dead. Monza’s long straights suit McLaren’s car better than most.
Max Verstappen arrives with a different kind of story. He crashed out on the opening lap of his final Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, a home race that drops off the calendar for good at the season’s end. There is little time to dwell on it. Monza offers a fast, low-downforce redemption lap for a four-time champion who has rarely gone two weekends without answering back.
Then there is Ferrari, walking into their home race with a complicated season behind them. Hamilton finally ended his win drought at Barcelona, his first victory since the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix. Charles Leclerc followed at Silverstone, his first since 2025 Austin Grand Prix. Those results proved Ferrari can win on merit again after a winless 2025.
However, recent weekends have been messier. Hamilton missed the podium at Zandvoort by finishing fourth. He was openly frustrated that Ferrari waited too long to let him past Leclerc when he had the pace to chase Russell for third.
That tension has not gone away, and it will meet the tifosi’s full attention this weekend. Monza is not a place where a struggling Ferrari gets to hide.
F2: Tsolov holds on as Câmara closes
Nikola Tsolov took a 20-poin lead into the summer break. However, it has been shrinking. The Campos Racing driver sits on 167 points after the Hungarian round. Gabriele Minì sits second with 147 points, and Rafael Câmara closing fast in third on 145.
Câmara took his second podium of the Budapest weekend and cut his gap to Minì to just two points, while Invicta Racing moved up to second in the teams’ standings on the back of it. Alexander Dunne remains fourth, with Noel León, the Budapest feature race winner, climbing into the picture behind him.
Tsolov’s cushion is real, but not comfortable. Câmara has the form of the paddock right now. Monza’s slipstreaming straights have a habit of rewarding whoever is bravest into the first chicane. A single bad weekend could turn this from a two-point gap for second into a genuine three-way fight for the title itself.
F3: down to two, with two rounds left
F3’s title race has narrowed to a straight fight. Freddie Slater took the championship lead with his maiden win in the Hungary feature race, edging eight points clear of Ugo Ugochukwu, who had led the standings into that weekend.
Only Monza and the season-closing Madrid round remain. This means that every point from here matters. Théophile Naël sits third, his Campos teammate Ernesto Rivera close behind him, while Brando Badoer was the form driver of Budapest.
There is a neat symmetry building, too. Campos leads the teams’ championship, with Trident second, and last year’s season split the two titles between them: the drivers’ crown to Trident, the teams’ title to Campos. Whether that repeats depends heavily on what happens over the next ten days.
Why this Italian Grand Prix is worth clearing your Sunday
What makes this Italian Grand Prix weekend rare is not any single storyline. It is that all three grids arrive with something genuinely at stake. Antonelli’s F1 lead is comfortable but not bulletproof. Especially not with Norris finding form and Ferrari desperate for a rest in front of their own crowd.
Tsolov’s F2 advantage is under real pressure from a driver who has found late-season pace at exactly the wrong moment for him. F3 has boiled down to two drivers with two rounds left to settle it.
Monza has a way of rewarding nerve over caution. Straight-line speed decides qualifying, but the chicanes decide the race, and every one of these fights will be shaped by who keeps their head under braking rather than who has the fastest car on paper. By Sunday evening, at least one of these three storylines will look very different than it does right now.
Feature image credit: Formula 1
Edited by Alexandra.
About The Author
Leave a Reply