Italian GP: Pirelli Grand Prix Preview

By Courtesy of Pirelli
September 2 2025

Pirelli Italian Grand Prix Preview

The Monza event is always special but this year, it is even more so. It will be the 75th time that the Autodromo has hosted a Formula 1 World Championship race, more than any other circuit in the history of motor racing’s blue riband category. For Pirelli, this weekend marks the end of celebrations for having taken part in 500 Grands Prix, a milestone reached at Zandvoort last Sunday. As was the case for the Dutch Grand Prix, here in Italy, the twenty cars on track and all the slick tyres will feature a special logo, which was presented in London on 18 February, as part of the celebrations for 75 years of Formula 1. Also in Monza, the drivers and team personnel will join senior management from F1, the FIA and Pirelli for a celebratory photo, a few hours before the start of the race.

The FORMULA 1 PIRELLI GRAN PREMIO D’ITALIA 2025, to give the Monza race its official title, takes place around 20 kilometres from the headquarters of the sport’s Global Tyre Partner and Sunday’s podium will reflect this special link. The top three finishers will sport a unique Podium Cap, part of the 2025 collection produced by Pirelli Design, with creative input from the designer Denis Dekovic. The Monza Podium Cap which features the “azzurro” blue recalling the Italian sky above the “Temple of Speed”, as well as the 500 GP logo, is already on sale on its dedicated e-commerce platform. (https://store.pirelli.com/).

Those three drivers, along with the representative of the winning team, will also hold aloft a very special trophy, which goes by the name of “Chimera.” This name was given it by Nico Vascellari, the Italian artist responsible for the fifth edition of the project set up by Pirelli and Pirelli HangarBicocca. In fact, since 2021, an Italian artist has been entrusted with the creation of a trophy for the Italian race of which Pirelli is the Title Sponsor, incorporating the contemporary artistic expression from traditional art venues to the circuits of the world of Formula 1. The first commission in 2021 was handed to Alice Ronchi, followed in 2022 by Patrick Tuttofuoco, in 2023 by Ruth Beraha and in 2024 by Andrea Sala.

The theme of mythology and speed, already visited with “Tifone” in 2022, is continued this year with “Chimera.” The enigmatic sculpture created by Vascellari represents the movement of the three fastest creatures in the air, in water and on land, the peregrine falcon, the sail fish and the cheetah respectively. Their individual aerodynamics, linked to the wings and talons in the case of the bird, the tail for the cat and the fin for the fish, come together to create a single fantastical creature, evoking evolution, metamorphosis and change. The trophies are made from aluminium, a lightweight material also used in the manufacture of Formula 1 cars, employing a process that starts from a two-dimensional drawing, which is then transformed through organic modelling and 3D resin printing, and culminates in investment casting, one of the oldest sculpting techniques. This unites artisanal craftsmanship with highly innovative methods.

“The reference to the animal world in this trophy stems from mankind’s natural fascination with it, an instinctive feeling that goes beyond and expands our limits of speed, flight and endurance,” explains Vascellari. “Animals are an inexhaustible source of inspiration. When I designed the trophy, I thought about the moment the driver lifts it high above his head: a symbolic gesture to elevate the animal world and nature above us, in an attempt to restore balance. It is also a celebration of nature’s ability to be a source of inspiration.”

“Chimera” will be unveiled at Monza during the Pirelli Tyres Talk session, for media only, in the Pirelli Hot Laps garage (box 7) on Friday 5 September, immediately after the first Formula 1 free practice session. On hand, apart from the artist will be Aldo Costa, Chief Technical Officer of Dallara Automobili and Mario Isola, Pirelli Director of Motorsport.

The compounds
There is no change in compounds compared to last year, when the track had just been resurfaced for the Italian Grand Prix at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza. The C3 is the Hard, the C4 Medium and the C5 Soft. Twelve months on, inevitably the surface will have aged, but it is unlikely to have any significant effect on the range of possible strategies at this circuit, where cars run in the lowest aerodynamic downforce configuration of the season.

It is likely that the most popular choices for the race itself will be the Hard and Medium. One can assume that the level of graining will be lower than last year as the track will now be bedded in. Time lost in the pit lane for a tyre change is among the longest of the season, so teams will try and run as long a stint as possible, keeping degradation under control, with the aim of only changing tyres once.

It is difficult to overtake at Monza, primarily because of the reduced effectiveness of the DRS, with the cars running minimum aero downforce levels. This too tends to swing the balance in favour of a one-stop strategy. On the other hand, temperature can have the opposite effect given that September in Lombardy can sometimes still feel like the height of summer. This can speed up tyre degradation, which would make a two-stop more competitive.

In 2024
14 drivers opted to start on the Medium, the rest taking a more conservative approach with the Hard. Lance Stroll pitted three times and the remaining 18 finishers were split almost equally between one and two stoppers. The three drivers on the podium all started on the C4. The winner, Charles Leclerc, switched to the C3 on lap 15 and then went all the way to the chequered flag. The McLaren duo of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, second and third respectively, stopped a second time to take on another set of Hards. The aforementioned Stroll was meant to be on a two-stop strategy, only making a final stop for Softs in an attempt to secure the point on offer for setting the fastest race lap.

Graining was the key factor when deciding on strategy, as it was quite significant in the early stints, before dropping off in the later ones. This meant drivers who had gone for a single stop were able to extend tyre usage without paying too high a price in terms of performance.

The track
A lap of the Zandvoort track is 4.259 kilometres in length, running through the dunes on the North Sea coast, just under 40 kilometres from the capital of the Netherlands. It boasts 14 low to medium speed corners – four to the left and ten to the right – of which the third and last are banked at angles of 19 and 18 degrees respectively, much steeper than the turns at Indianapolis. These corners generate very high vertical and lateral loads on the tyres, which requires the teams to pay close attention to set-up and management of the car-tyre package. The aerodynamic downforce level required is very high, similar to that seen in Budapest. The track usually offers low levels of grip and this can be greatly exacerbated by sand blown onto the surface by the coastal winds. Being just a few hundred metres from the North Sea, the weather can be very changeable and, at the end of summer, temperatures are usually already below 20 °C.

Keyword: Braking
The braking required for the first chicane at Monza is one of the most severe on the Formula 1 calendar. According to data from Brembo, the cars arrive at the braking point at around 337 km/h and are subjected to an instant deceleration of around 5g, as the cars slow to 89 km/h. By pressing hard on the pedal, the driver operates the calipers that grip on the carbon discs. The kinetic energy this generates is rapidly turned into heat which is also transmitted to the tyres. The front axle is the one that comes under the most stress during braking as it deals with the major deceleration. The area where the tyre meets the track, known as the “contact patch” is reduced in size by the camber angle of the wheels, therefore compression occurs that can cause a temporary flattening of the tyre’s profile. This increases wear and can make it more prone to locking up.

Locking up occurs when the tyre stops turning and scrapes along the track. The creates a “flat spot” on the tread so that the tyre is no longer round. This leads to a loss of grip that causes the car to run wide through the corners. The driver turns the wheel into the corner, but the car continues to travel straight on, a phenomenon known as understeer, The occurrence of understeer increases considerably when the wheels lock up as the tyres slide across the surface and no longer generate sufficient lateral forces to turn efficiently.

Statistics Corner
This is the 75th year that Monza will host the Italian Grand Prix as a round of the Formula 1 World Championship. Although this is actually the 76th Italian Grand Prix, as for one year only, in 1980, the race was held in Imola. Even so, Monza tops the list of tracks that have hosted the most Grands Prix, ahead of Monaco and Silverstone.

Not only do two of the sports greats, Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton, share the top of the table for world championship crowns, they are also the most successful drivers at Monza with five wins apiece. They both have eight podium finishes to their name, while the Englishman also has the most pole positions on seven.

With twenty wins, Ferrari is the most successful team, almost a third of all the Italian races. It heads the fields for pole positions (23) and podium finishes (72). McLaren is second in all three of these lists with 11 wins, 12 pole positions and 31 podium finishes.

Another interesting “Italian” statistic concerning Monza is that it was the scene of the only race win for a Ferrari engine not fitted to a car built in Maranello. It happened in 2008 when Sebastian Vettel pulled off one of the most unexpected wins in the history of Formula 1 at the wheel of a Toro Rosso. In fact, the Faenza-based team produced another surprise 12 years later, when under the name AlphaTauri, it won in Monza again, with Pierre Gasly at the wheel.

The Italian Grand Prix has decided the outcome of the Drivers’ world championship 11 times, in 1950, 1956, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1969, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1978 and 1979. For Jackie Stewart, it happened twice, the Scotsman crowned in 1969 and 1973.

Pirelli GP Preview