Ghosts of Monza still haunt Italy's beautiful, intimidating F1 circuit

F1

Monza is one of the original world championship F1 circuits – Matt Bishop writes that the legends of the past can still be felt as the 'Temple of Speed' reverberates to modern-day machines

Monza banking archive shot

Monza is one of F1's most historic and charismatic circuits

Grand Prix Photo

Early September is Monza time. It always has been, and I hope it always will be. I was not there last weekend but I have been to the vast majority of grands prix held there over the past quarter-century, and, if ever you get a chance to go, you must. We Brits often claim Silverstone as the home of Formula 1 – and it is not an unreasonable contention since in 1950 it hosted the first ever championship F1 race and since then it has earned an indelible place in F1 history – but the truth is that Monza more fittingly warrants that description.

On Italian GP race days I used to leave my hotel at daybreak, drive my hire car into the Parco di Monza via the golf club entrance, park beside the old banking, marvel again at its daunting precipitousness, then walk over dewy grass to the paddock. On such early-autumn mornings, if you were in the right mood and the wind was rustling the leaves in the trees, it was possible to believe that you were in the presence of the ghost of Alberto Ascari, who won at the famous autodromo in 1951 and 1952 then went back there in 1955 to watch his friend Eugenio Castellotti test a Ferrari, decided on the spur of the moment to do a few laps himself, in cotton trousers, shirt sleeves, jacket and tie, borrowing Castellotti’s helmet, and crashed and died at Curva del Vialone, which has now been renamed Variante Ascari in his honour. Since then the Italian GP has been won only once by an Italian driver, Ludovico Scarfiotti, in 1966, which is perhaps sad and astonishing in equal measure.

Clay Regazzoni won the Italian GP in 1970 and 1975, and, although he was Swiss, he grew up in the canton of Ticino, in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, and the Monza tifosi always claimed him as their own. Emerson Fittipaldi scored one win and three second places there. “As my surname makes clear,” he once told me, “I have Italian ancestry, and the Italian press always used to write ‘Brazilian driver Fittipaldi fails’ when I did badly but ‘Italian-Brazilian driver triumphs’ when I did well.” But we are clutching at straws: neither he nor Regazzoni was Italian.

Clay Regazzoni Ferrari 1970 Italian GP Monza

Regazzoni took first Italian GP win in 1970

Grand Prix Photo

Regazzoni is no longer with us – he died in 2006 – but Fittipaldi is 76, fit and well, and he has always loved and still loves Monza. He first went there in 1970, at 23, having just joined the Lotus F1 team, and having driven only three grands prix. His team-mate was Jochen Rindt, who had won five of the nine grands prix that had been run that season and was heading the drivers’ world championship standings. On Saturday morning they had breakfast together at Monza’s famous Hotel de la Ville. “We talked about me doing a few Formula 2 races in 1971 for the team he was going to be running with Bernie [Ecclestone]. I said, ‘Sure, Jochen. I accept.’ Two hours later he was gone.” He was indeed, killed during practice when brakeshaft failure caused his Lotus to collide head-on into a crash barrier stanchion on the superfast approach to Parabolica.

From the archive

Two years later, in 1972, Fittipaldi won at Monza, and in so doing he became, at 25, the then youngest ever F1 world champion, a record that Fernando Alonso in 2005, Lewis Hamilton in 2008, Sebastian Vettel in 2010 and Max Verstappen in 2021 have all since broken.
It was a hugely emotional moment for Emerson. “As those last few laps clicked down, and when I finally crossed the line to win the race and the world championship, becoming not only the youngest world champion but also the first from Brazil, I saw Colin [Chapman, his boss at Lotus] throw his cap in the air. But I was thinking of my dad, describing the scene for my countrymen, commentating on the race for Brazilian TV, and of my family, watching it on a tiny black-and-white set back in Sao Paulo.”

When we think of Monza, inevitably it is tragedy as well as triumph that comes to our minds. Ascari and Rindt are but two of 52 drivers and riders to have been fatally injured at the autodromo, the first, Gregor Kuhn, in practice for the first Italian GP ever held there, in 1922, and, among the dozens of others, two who often appear in ‘best drivers never to have won an F1 world championship’ lists, Wolfgang von Trips in 1961 and Ronnie Peterson in 1978. Fast circuits tend not to be among the safest, and Monza has always been very, very fast. But it can also be intimidating in other ways.

Fittipaldi again: “My career ended in 1996, at the age of 49, when I had a massive 230mph (370km/h) shunt at the super-fast Michigan Speedway. But the most frightening moment of my career came as I walked from my McLaren to the podium at Monza in 1975. Clay [Regazzoni] had won the race, and Niki [Lauda] had won the world championship, both of them for Ferrari, and the tifosi went absolutely crazy.

Emerson Fittipaldi Lotus 1972 Italian GP Monza

Fittipaldi became F1’s then-youngest ever champion in 1972 at Monza

Grand Prix Photo

“As I walked to the podium, with [McLaren boss] Teddy [Mayer], we were jostled by thousands of Ferrari fans who had jumped the barriers to invade the track and get closer to Clay and Niki. They swarmed around us. It was terrifying. Teddy and I were thrown to the left, then to the right, then to the left again, both of us squeezed painfully by the massive weight of the surging crowd. At one point I tripped and nearly fell. If I’d ended up on the ground, and I nearly did, I’d have been trampled to death, I have no doubt about that.”

From the archive

The tifosi were better behaved on Sunday, in spite of or perhaps because of the strong performance of their beloved Scuderia. There were no Italian nor even quasi-Italian drivers for them to cheer; indeed, not one even took part. Since Scarfiotti’s day of days in 1966, seven Italians have won grands prix – Vittorio Brambilla, Riccardo Patrese, Elio de Angelis, Michele Alboreto, Alessandro Nannini, Jarno Trulli and Giancarlo Fisichella – but none of those victories was an Italian GP, although de Angelis and Patrese both won San Marino GPs held at Imola, in Italy. Perhaps the most naturally talented of that septet were Alboreto and Fisichella. Alboreto stood on two Monza podiums – second in 1984 and 1988 – and Fisichella was third at Monza in 2005. After he had sprayed the Mumm that day, Giancarlo said: “Michele was the last Italian on the Monza podium before today. He was a great man. I dedicate this result to his memory.”

Three days before, I had interviewed Fisico at the Hotel de la Ville. As we sat down, an elderly waiter approached. He introduced himself, visibly delighted to be serving an F1 driver the still water that is their staple beverage in the lead-up to a grand prix but too used to doing so to ask for an autograph, and spoke a few sentences before taking his leave. I do not understand Italian but I recognised a few key words – colazione (breakfast) and morte (I think you know what that means). After the old man had departed, Giancarlo looked if not quite ashen-faced then unmistakably disquieted.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

2 Giancarlo Fisichella Renault Italian GP Monza

Fisichella dedicated his 2005 podium to the late Michele Alboreto

“That waiter said that we’re sitting at the table that Jochen Rindt and Emerson Fittipaldi had breakfast at in 1970, just before Rindt was killed,” he replied.

Like almost all circuits, even very fast ones, Monza is safer now than it used to be. But its ghosts live on, and they will not let it change. Nor should they. It is the home of Formula 1.

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