The €21m-upgrade to the Monza circuit was a key talking point ahead of Formula 1’s 2024 Italian Grand Prix – but now we’ve had the chance to see the real impact of those controversial kerb changes from trackside.
Autosport headed to the famous Ascari chicane to see how the cars were taking the three-part sequence that leads onto Monza’s back straight now its kerbs have been lowered and flattened.
This was a particular bone of contention for the F1 drivers during Thursday’s media day, with RB’s Daniel Ricciardo saying “it’s very flat now”, while Mercedes racer George Russell reckoned “it's going to offer the opportunity for drivers to cut the corner” of these changes.
Having headed out of the top of the paddock and observed the Renault engine staff protesting at Alpine’s idea of becoming a Mercedes engine customer – those in the grandstand beyond the start line stood to display their banner and politely applauded Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly out the pits at FP1’s commencement – we took a hard right to leave the long walk to Turn 1 and cut across the midfield to reach Ascari.
As we tramp on under the blazing late-summer sun here in Lombardy, the circuit commentators are getting really excited about Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s early laps. Their comments reach fever pitch as he puts Russell’s Mercedes W15 top with his first flier and then there’s a certain agony in the air when he biffs it into the Parabolica barriers on his second effort just as we arrive at our Ascari end point.
After a 13-minute delay, we can finally see how the drivers are indeed much more on the kerbs through here compared to their 2023 lines around the old kerbs. These had drains running slightly down from the main kerbs where drivers would try to thread their tyres through to nail their trajectories.
The new kerb-riding is particularly the case for the second and third parts of the Ascari sequence – the cars still stay wide through the first left as it means they can carry better speed into the longer second part.
Lando Norris catches the eye early on – he’s slamming across the kerbs at the third apex much harder than the other frontrunning drivers and particularly his team-mate, Oscar Piastri. But Norris is hardly outrageously cutting this point as had been feared on Thursday. It just doesn’t appear to be risking track limits, nor taking away from the trackside viewing spectacle.
For much of the session our main takeaway is how the Williams drivers are struggling all the way through the Ascari complex each time on push laps.
Just past the halfway point, Alex Albon impressively saves a massive rear snap between the apexes of the second and third Ascari elements, while his new – and temporary – team-mate Franco Colapinto is sliding so much his car is almost drifting through Ascari. This doesn’t come with much a punishment on the timesheets for Williams however, as Albon still finishes eighth in FP1.
Come the session’s end, the changes Mercedes have made to Lewis Hamilton’s car mean its sparking from its rear floor after skating across the apex three kerbs, but the seven-time world champion isn’t exactly attacking them hard. These are still ground-effect F1 cars after all.
Max Verstappen provides a handy illustration of the differing challenge here now on new and used rubber. As he puts in the 1m21.676s that will top FP1, the Red Bull is totally planted through every part of Ascari – skipping between the two later apexes we can really see from our vantage point on the sequence’s exit as if on straight line trajectories through the curves.
By contrast, Piastri and Hamilton are needing regular stabs at the wheel as they complete late-session long-runs. The former had looked to have been grappling with his McLaren in the early part of Ascari when the wind picked up with 20 minutes to go, but come the end of his long-run his rear is wiggling regularly each time between the second and third apexes too.
It seems at this stage that the worry about the Ascari kerb changes ruining the Monza spectacle and risking reigniting the track-limits nightmare F1 thought it had just escaped was a little overblown. The drivers are running on the kerbs now they can – but the spectacle from trackside seems little different compared to when we came here in 2023.
Verstappen’s leading time comes in almost exactly one second quicker than what he’d put in to lead 2023’s FP1 session, but back then he was using the hard tyre compared to the softs this time around, as Red Bull joins the rest in seeing how the new, darker asphalt is punishing the tyres right from the off at this event.
This, plus the usual engine mode and fuel load practice caveats must been considered around everything we’re reporting from FP1 trackside, but a comparison of Verstappen’s year-on-year GPS data traces is nevertheless revealing. Here, the grip levels offered by the new asphalt will also be making a critical difference worth remembering.
Interestingly, Verstappen’s minimum speed through Ascari in 2024 on his quickest lap comes in at 108.7mph, while in 2023 it was 113.7mph.
The data also shows that Verstappen spent a fraction longer off-throttle after Ascari’s first apex than he did at this stage in 2023 – because he was waiting for the car to shoot wider onto the new kerbs before hitting the gas again and keeping that pinned through the rest of the complex.
But, let’s not forget, this is just FP1 and, Antonelli aside, the drivers are only just starting to push the limit of Monza’s searing speed challenge…
Watch: Why Drivers are Unimpressed with Monza's Updates - News from F1's Italian GP Paddock
