Tremble before the Temple of Speed?

Formula 1’s fastest race at its fastest racetrack will look different this season, making demands that the 2026 engine cannot hope to meet.

But while that will reduce the speed, it won’t reduce Monza’s unique challenge — in some ways, in fact, it will enhance it.

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Il Tempio della Velocità has always been about running as slippery a car as possible to slash drag and maximise straight-line speed, but the impetus has doubled in an age low-drag cars also put less strain on the engine.

But the lower the drag, the sketchier the performance into the track’s single-file chicanes and medium-speed bends.

This, after all, is where the drivers make the difference in Monza.

Whoever can master this new challenge first will stand themselves in good stead to win one of motorsport’s most famous grands prix.

FERRARI AIMING HIGH AT HOME

Monza is always circled on Ferrari’s calendar at the start of each season. The closest thing any race has to a home team, the Scuderia intends to pull something special out of the bag even during a season of struggle.

This season, however, has delivered far more than struggle. Though it’s won only two races, that’s the same count as McLaren and Mercedes from the last six rounds.

It’s had the speed to win at least another couple in that period too — though this reads as a pro and a con, for those potential wins were squandered through poor and at times baffling execution.

If the title ends up being closely run, bizarre off-weekends and what should have been strong circuits in Hungary and the Netherlands will sting.

But Ferrari doesn’t intend to die wondering. It’s throwing everything at what’s left of the campaign, starting with a new engine this weekend.

The timing is typical Ferrari but not without logic. Every kilowatt counts here, and grunt has been the team’s biggest weakness.

“Every little helps,” said Lewis Hamilton, 59 points off the title lead. “Even in the last race [at Zandvoort], on such a short circuit, we were losing 0.4s a lap through the race.

“That’s a huge deficit, and we’ve carried that through the year to this point.

“This is a step forward. It’s not the whole gap that we need — but we knew that would be the case — but to see bits coming each weekend, adding to the car, it’s exciting to see that we are pushing and strongly still believe that we’ve got what it takes to win.”

Ferrari is also pushing on with yet more upgrades, which it says it has the budget headroom to continue doing until the end of the season — apparently in contrast with Mercedes, which reckons it’s pretty much out of money.

Will it be enough to win this weekend?

It’s a stretch given what we know about Ferrari’s lack of straight-line speed, but if the car can look even competitive at a track like this, it will be a boost for upcoming circuits that are more balanced between aerodynamics and power.

The challenge might be on.

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McLAREN’S ON A ROLL — CAN IT KEEP IT UP?

After a dour start to the season and a long slide backwards, McLaren has recovered to win two grands prix on the bounce, one on either side of the mid-season break, to mark itself as the form team of the middle of the campaign — and Lando Norris, winner of both events, the top driver of the moment.

It’s more or less what McLaren promised would happen this season, albeit not quite to this timeline.

The reigning constructors champion said it would start 2026 with a vanilla, basic car that would then be upgraded heavily. What it didn’t predict was that it would lose months backing away from a dud development concept, which has left it 162 points behind Mercedes — and Norris 83 points behind Antonelli — even after those two victories.

But the scoreline doesn’t negate the form line — or the history. This is the expert upgrade team of the last two seasons, and its latest round of big upgrades appears to have hit the spot exactly.

So even if its two wins came at the similarly laid-out Hungaroring and Zandvoort circuits, why shouldn’t we believe that McLaren can permanently contend at the front, picking up where it left off late last year?

There are, unfortunately for McLaren fans, a few reasons.

The first is that this year’s car is not competitive in a straight line despite the Mercedes engine. That’s thanks to both draggy aerodynamics and also too-short gear ratios. The latter also knocks on to inefficient charging of the battery because the car is often in a higher gear compared to the works Mercedes, meaning it’s revving less and therefore has less power to redirect to the hybrid motor.

The second is that the car is also poor in slow-speed corners — and, in general, the slower the corner, the less competitive the McLaren car. Monza is mostly straights and slow chicanes.

Norris, though, was upbeat about the prospects of winning three on the bounce.

“I think we’re at the stage where it’s hard to predict where we’re going to be,” he said.

“We’re just focused, working on the stuff that’s in our control. I’m doing the same.

“We’re clearly in a good place as a whole team at the minute. We know we have things we really have to try and work on and improve, and we’ll see if we’ve been able to make any progress into this weekend.

“It’s another weekend where we want to be hopeful and believe it’s possible. We just have to wait and see.

“The goal is to continue the performances we’ve had lately, but we’ll have to see tomorrow how the pace is and see if we can have another good weekend.”

The team will use its rollover rear wing — which it’s calling the H-wing owing to the sponsor name on that part of the car — which should help it to shed drag and boost straight-line speed.

Norris’s title chance is a longer shot than Hamilton and Ferrari’s, but similar to the home team, if McLaren can look competitive at a track that shouldn’t suit it, it will bode well for the rest of the season.

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RUSSELL’S BIG CHANCE TO BEAT ANTONELLI

With title leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli starting at the back of the grid, it falls to George Russell to fly the flag for Mercedes.

It’s a big opportunity for the Mercedes driver, who has looked incapable of building title momentum for himself this season.

The chance is twofold.

The first is obvious: put some big points over Antonelli as the home favourite attempts to recover from deep down the order. This is the bare minimum, no matter the result.

The other is less tangible but no less important: control the weekend.

Russell has arguably controlled just one weekend all season: Australia, where he was clearly at the head of the field.

He was also very good in Austria, though Antonelli was arguably quicker in the race.

The Briton surely won’t have Antonelli to compare with this weekend. At a circuit that should perfectly suit his Mercedes car-engine package, there aren’t many excuses for not bossing Monza.

“For me, it doesn’t change anything, because I always want to focus on myself, focus on my limitations and the areas I want to improve,” Russell said. “The job is still the same, so my approach will be exactly the same.”

It would be a useful boost of morale after a bruising first half of the season and a Dutch Grand Prix that started promisingly but ended with the same old sight of his teammate finishing ahead of him, somewhat muting reviews of an otherwise generally positive weekend.

It could also be important for Mercedes. With Antonelli’s recovery unpredictable from the back under these new regulations and Ferrari targeting a strong result with upgrades, Russell could be the only bulwark against the Scuderia taking a big bite out of its title deficit, changing the complexion of the championship race.

“It’s not going to be as straightforward as it once was, but I’m hoping to fight for pole and the win again,” he added. “I think there will be a lot of tough competition.”

It all rests on Russell’s shoulders — as if he needed any more pressure.

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RED BULL DRIVERS GET A SECOND CHANCE

Isack Hadjar will skip the second grand prix in a row, having fractured his hand in a training accident during the mid-season break.

That means Liam Lawson will get a second crack in the Red Bull Racing car, while Yuki Tsunoda gets a second bench call-up for Racing Bulls.

With another race next weekend, both could see those stints extended to three races.

Both drivers acquitted themselves very well in Zandvoort, particularly in the context of it being a sprint weekend featuring only one hour of practice.

Now, though, they get to really sink their teeth into it — and with the full allocation of three hours of practice to build into a weekend at one of the better-used circuits in European motorsport, there’ll really be nowhere to hide.

The stakes are unchanged, but the urgency to perform grows more critical with every weekend.

Lawson has already ticked the box of banishing the demons of his two-race 2025 Red Bull Racing career, but now he’s looking to cement his spot on the 2027 grid. He’s up against Red Bull junior Nikola Tsolov, who is leading the Formula 2 championship, and though the Kiwi has been performing very well at Racing Bulls this season, he knows as well as anyone that the Red Bull driver program moves to its own rhythm.

Good points and a good comparison with Verstappen will help to seal the deal.

“I’ll just try and make the most of it,” he said. “It’s an interesting position for me to be in.

“Zandvoort was, being a sprint weekend, obviously quite stressful at times, but overall it was a good weekend.

“Now I’ve had that, it should be a bit easier to adjust. We also have three practice sessions here. It’s a much more normal weekend, so it’s another good opportunity.”

For Tsunoda the question is existential. His shock Zandvoort cameo might have reinserted him into the battle for Esteban Ocon’s Haas seat; a big result this weekend could see him move up the short list, which is believed to have Formula 2 star Rafael Câmara at the top.

The Japanese driver is determined to race somewhere next season, and if the F1 door is closed, that somewhere is likely to be IndyCar — and once he commits to the stateside switch, it’s hard to see how he makes it back to the grand prix scene.

This could be his last chance to state his case.

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WHAT KIND OF RACE WILL WE GET?

The greatly reduced top speed of this year’s car-engine combination will change more than just lap time.

There are expectations the power unit package could create some wacky, unpredictable racing and perhaps the return of the comical spectacle of drivers risking failure to set a qualifying time in pursuit of a slipstream.

It’s not the slipstream effect per se that the drivers will be seeking. The aero effect of reduced air resistance is only a small part of the equation; the lighter workload on the battery when it has less air to push against is believed to be worth much more.

Antonelli will surely be used to slipstream Russell given his guaranteed low starting position, but Ferrari has traditionally sought the perfect slipstream too. It will be fascinating to see how much the teams risk in the grid-setting session.

But the race will be more interesting still, because not only will the slipstream situation continue, but the difference in power owing to overtake mode could also shake things up.

Overtake mode allows a driver within a second of the driver ahead to charge their battery a little more, giving them extra power down the straights. In practice it means they’ll be able to accelerate harder for longer before the hybrid motor runs out of juice.

At other circuits we’ve seen that generate what some call ‘yoyo’ racing — where the overtake mode advantage is swapped from lap to lap, preventing a driver from breaking clear.

Play it well and a driver could make big gains — Antonelli will surely be thinking deeply about his energy strategy in the race.

Play it badly, however, and you could end up stuck in position or slipping backwards.

This will be a very different Monza to past seasons.

How it’s different, though, is still to be decided.