Monza at 100 – its greatest moments and darkest hours

F1

Monza is now 100 years old, with the centenary of the first race on Saturday – Paul Fearnley looks back over its often brilliant but sometimes terrible history

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Schumacher took an emotional win for Ferrari at Monza '96

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The ‘Temple of Speed’ with its steepling bankings and fanatical congregation: European motorsport’s most charismatic venue is 100 years old – and a bit.

Monza was completed in July 1922 and consecrated that September when it first hosted its country’s most important motor race. Only four times hereafter – and not since Imola in 1980 – has the Italian Grand Prix ventured elsewhere.

This parkland circuit on the outskirts of a city north of Milan – a combination of simplistic road course and (until 1969) a speed bowl ramped up alarmingly in 1954 – has never been the most interesting or challenging.

Its appeal and notoriety lay elsewhere: fervent fans worshipping at the feet of (mainly) Ferrari; slipstreaming eddies that tied fields together and enabled the very good to often cling to and occasionally defeat the very best in thrilling blanket finishes; and – unavoidable given a centenary of motor sport – disasters as well as triumphs.

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Let’s deal with the latter first: Peter Gethin’s throwing up of a celebratory arm in 1971 to convince officials – and perhaps even himself – that he had pipped Ronnie Peterson and three others also desperately seeking their maiden GP victory; and champion-elect Jackie Stewart’s careful and perspicacious gearing of his car to beat Jochen Rindt in the 1969 sprint to the line in similarly swirling circumstances.

Monza was where Stewart had also scored his maiden GP victory – out-fumbling and upstaging BRM team leader Graham Hill in the process – in 1965; and in 1973, charging through the field after an early puncture, it would be where he secured his third world title.

It would also be where he strapped himself in sure in the knowledge that friend and champion-elect Rindt had just been killed in an accident during practice in 1970. Having tasted salt tears, within four laps the famously compartmentalised Stewart would set his fastest lap in a car he disliked. He would race, too, finishing an “aggressive” second. Not even the sternest critic could question his bravery.

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Regazzoni leads on weekend of Rindt’s death

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The crowd went ape that day, flooding the track to swamp the victorious Ferrari of Clay Regazzoni – a competitor whose on-track antics Stewart viewed warily. The Scot, gorge rising, zigzagged around them, sought sanctuary from them and passed out.

Monza and the sport today are much less gladiatorial, the former calmed and its fields strung out by the addition of chicanes (a gradual process from 1972), and the latter built on the safety foundations laid by Stewart.

Disaster, however, has continued to stalk triumph here.

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The old Nürburgring and Spa-Francorchamps are the examples usually proffered as catalysts for change yet Monza had emphasised its need most – and highlighted the puzzling long lack of pressing for it.

In 1928, Emilio Materassi’s Talbot flew over a ‘safety’ ditch, killing its driver and more than 20 others. Thirty-three years later, Wolfgang von Trips’ Ferrari climbed a ‘safety’ banking, killing its driver and 15 others.

Drivers – ‘Fritz’ Kuhn (during practice for Monza’s inaugural Grand Prix), Ugo Sivocci, Louis Zborowski, Luigi Arcangeli and (on the same dark day in 1933) Giuseppe Campari, ‘Baconin’ Borzacchini and Count Stanislas Czaikowski – accepted the risks and paid the ultimate price.

Spectators should not and could not any longer be expected to live and die under the same sketchy ‘guidelines’.

Danger, of course, can never be entirely ruled out – the Monza pile-up that led to the death of Ronnie Peterson (an eventual three-times winner of the Italian GP) in 1978, and the loosed wheel that claimed volunteer fire marshal Paolo Gislimberti in 2000 – but motor racing’s toll has been reduced drastically in recent times.

McLaren F1 driver Mika Hakkinen crashes at the 1999 Italian GP

Häkkinen spins out of Monza ’99

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If this isn’t reading as a celebration of Monza, it’s because these two imposters, though they can and should be treated differently, cannot be divorced.

The shiver as one walks through the gates at Monza is triggered by all of its history: Bernd Rosemeyer and Tazio Nuvolari winning in Auto Unions; Mika Häkkinen’s crouching and crying in the woods after crashing out in 1999; and the surging sea of red as Michael Schumacher stepped atop the podium in 2006 in the knowledge that he would be leaving Ferrari at the season’s end.

Jim Clark’s regaining of a lap after an early puncture to lead in 1967, only to run out of fuel on the last lap.

Lewis Hamilton’s 164mph pole lap of 2020 – chicanes and all.

The last-minute switch to a 4-3-4 grid so that Juan Fangio’s red Maserati might prevent a sea of Vanwall British Racing Green on the front row of 1957.

The British teams’ boycott of 1960 in protest of the continued inclusion of those suspension-crushing bankings, and Phil Hill’s subsequent final victory for a front-engined GP car.

Poor Rudolf Heydel, so full of promise, so short of time, killed testing an Auto Union in February 1936 without ever having made a GP start.

Effervescent Boley Pittard killed in similarly fiery circumstances in 1967.

Italian-born champion-elect Mario Andretti ‘jumping’ the start and winning an intense battle with Gilles Villeneuve in 1978 unaware of the penalty and tragedy to come, in the loss of his friend and team-mate Peterson in the resulting crashing.

Monza was where Andretti’s eyes, ears and heart had been opened to motor racing as a child spectator in 1954; where he had first driven a Formula 1 car in 1968 and been treated offhandedly by the organisers (sound familiar?); and where he would make his famous comeback for Ferrari in 1982.

It is, however, the triumphs and disasters of Alberto Ascari – Andretti’s first hero – that best encapsulate Monza’s story.

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Andretti took pole at Monza four years loss of friend Peterson

Paul-Henri Cahier / Getty Images

Victorious for Ferrari in Alfa Romeo’s absence in 1949, Ascari put the mighty Alfetti to the sword in 1951. Untouchable in 1952 – likely Maserati rival Fangio had broken his neck at Monza earlier in the year – he was poised to win again in 1953 when tipped into a spin at the final corner; some witnesses blamed Ferrari team-mate Guiseppe Farina while others pointed the finger at Onofre Marimón, many laps down but unwisely mixing in on ‘behalf’ of Maserati team-mate, mentor and friend Fangio.

From the archive

A lucrative but hasty switch to overly ambitious Lancia thereafter placed Ascari in a GP limbo and he found himself having to hitch occasional rides with Maserati and Ferrari.

On 26 May 1955, he arrived at Monza ostensibly to watch Eugenio Castellotti test the Ferrari sports car they were to share at the track’s Supercortemaggiore race; Ascari was still nursing aches and pains from his Lancia’s plunge into Monaco’s harbour.

For some reason this most superstitious of superstars decided to undertake a few slow laps still in civvies and minus his lucky blue crash helmet – not even wife Mietta was allowed to touch it – for it was away being repaired; he borrowed Castellotti’s.

His fatal crash at Vialone Curve has never been conclusively explained: a stray dog, an inattentive track worker, a tyre failure; or maybe a blackout caused by undiagnosed concussion. All have been thrown into the pot.

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Ascari won two world championship rounds at Monza, but was also tragically killed there

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Another mystery is that Italy has yet to produce a worthy replacement – American-naturalised Andretti aside – for all its passion for the sport.

Perhaps that passion, blind and unbridled, is the reason why it hasn’t.

The ‘Monza Dilemma’ is motor racing’s dilemma.

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