Grand Prix 2018 Italian Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

MONZA.
The Autodromo Nazionale Monza. "The Temple of Speed." I suspect the second name is the Tifosi name for Monza. But with very good reason. It was built for speed, it was incredibly fast, and they have been slowing it down since 1933.
It was built in 1922, financed by the Milan Automobile Club. What they built for their fast circuit, was a banked oval linked to a road circuit. Obviously the racing car of the day that was slung off the oval onto the road section produced high speeds and spectacular viewing. We can only dream what that would look like with a modern F1 car. BUT .. by 1932 it had killed 9 drivers and 27 spectators. Obviously even the most fanatical speed merchant realised that things had to change.They stopped using the oval, introduced the Lesmo curves on the road section and started to introduce stands for the spectators. But then WW11 intervened , and all racing stopped at Monza.

Post war the circuit was totally revamped, and for whatever reason they reintroduced the high speed banked oval. The circuit was fully operational by 1955, and by now it was used by F1. Races were won by the likes of Moss, Hill, Fangio and Brooks. But in 1961 the racing driver Von Tripp and 15 spectators all died in one crash, and F1 abandoned the use of the oval, using only the road circuit. The oval was finally abandoned for all racing in 1969.
However the road circuit itself was still incredibly fast, and in the 1970's the first chicanes were introduced, the Variant del Rettifilo and the Variant Ascari, neither of which had the required effect. In the next few years the efforts to slow the circuit down as the cars got faster, introduced us to the, Vialone, Curve Grande and the della Reggia. All very familiar to us in 2018, but by now 48 years old. Most of them have been altered a little, moved slightly, generally messed around with, and a few more added for good luck, the curve del Serraglio and the Parabolica. Listen to the race commentary you'll hear most of them tripping of someones tongue.
But it remains a fast circuit, not nearly as fast as it once was. The old Oval is gently rotting in the trees behind todays' circuit, perhaps that's where the "The Temple of Speed" is. Todays modern circuit is a "Temple to the Tifosi" (my quote). It's still suited to cars that can go flat out, at high speed, and not fall apart, and we all know who they are. So all those curves and variants have been designed in such a way as to apply the letter of the law without adhering to it. Very Italian.
I'm obviously putting this up before we know what happened at Spa, as we only have a few days before the next round of PQR, and before we know the full outcome of the driver moveathon. Whatever has happened I hope it will throw up some interesting discussion. Most of all, I really hope that Monza and it's history plus the mad Tifosi will give us a good race.
 
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RasputinLives and Dartman thanks for your nice words

Regarding Monza and whether it would be feasible to use the banking in the future I think that it's a matter of safety. I don't have an engineering background but I fear that with the current cars it wouldn't be safe, on the one hand you have to consider that if they were supposed to race both the current road track as well as the banking section the cars would have to run with a very low drag configuration, so they would be very difficult in parts of the existing track and on the other hand let's assume for a second that they could achieve speed in excess of 350 kph, at those speeds the cars create a lot of turbulence and so it would be nigh on impossible to keep close to the car in front. Also I assume that if you were in the slipstream of a car travelling at 350 kph (assuming that in very turbulent air with not much downforce you can still drive you car something which I doubt), my fear is that at the very moment in which you move of out the slipstream of the car in front, ie you move into less turbulent air, you would hit a brick wall of air and unsettle their car. All this to say that I'd love to see racing on the banking but with today's cars it would be suicidal, unless they ban every aero device (or they come up with cars with comparatively little downforce like Indycars and run only on the banking)

Having said that I wish a merry Xmas to everyone :goodday:
 
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