Loading Experience...
Preparing your Formula Dream journey
Ferrari topped Friday on mediums, Mercedes had the race pace, and Monza has not seen a safety car in three years. What the measured data says about the race.
Monza has gone three consecutive races without a single safety car deployment. That one fact shapes everything about Sunday.
We pulled the timing and telemetry from Friday practice at the 2026 Italian Grand Prix, and the race history for the three previous editions. Here is what the numbers actually support, separated from what people are saying.
Measured across the last three Italian Grands Prix:
| Year | Race laps | Mean stops per driver | Most common | Safety cars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 51 | 1.37 | 1 | 0 |
| 2024 | 53 | 1.55 | 1 | 0 |
| 2025 | 53 | 1.05 | 1 | 0 |
One stop is the most common answer in all three years, and there has not been a safety car deployment in any of them. All three were dry.
That matters more than it sounds. Across the whole 2026 season we measured an average of 2.05 pit stops per driver per race, and the races that produced the most stops were the ones with interruptions: Monaco averaged 4.05 stops in a dry race purely because it kept producing safety cars. Monza does the opposite. It is wide, it has enormous run-off, and cars that go off usually rejoin. The full season numbers are in how many pit stops in an F1 race.
So the base case for Sunday is a one-stop race that runs green from start to finish. If that holds, track position and tyre life decide it, not strategy calls.
The headline from Friday is that Ferrari topped FP1 with a 1-2, Charles Leclerc ahead of Lewis Hamilton, and both did it on the medium tyre while the cars behind were on softs.
Then FP2 inverted it. George Russell led, with Leclerc second and Kimi Antonelli third.
The long runs are where it gets interesting, because they contradict the qualifying picture:
Three cars on the hard tyre ran quicker than both Ferraris on the soft. The soft is the faster compound, so that is the wrong way round if Ferrari have the better race car.
One caveat we will not skip: fuel loads are never published, so a team running lighter looks better. What is not an assumption is the compound each car was on, and that points one way.
Between FP1 and FP2 the field improved by an average of 0.741 seconds as the track rubbered in.
Ferrari did not. Hamilton found only 0.165s and Leclerc 0.329s, the smallest gains of anyone except Liam Lawson, who was slower in FP2 than FP1.
That is the mechanism behind the swing from a Ferrari 1-2 in the morning to Mercedes first and third in the afternoon. The FP1 result was flattering, and the reason is measurable rather than a matter of opinion. The full breakdown is in the Monza practice data analysis.
Max Verstappen finished FP2 ninth, 0.818s off the pace, having sat out FP1 while Ayumu Iwasa drove his car.
On the radio he reported no grip, brakes that were not working and a car jumping on the front axle, describing it as "like driving on ice". Our corner-by-corner telemetry agrees: Verstappen carried the lowest minimum speed of the seven quickest drivers at Lesmo 1, Lesmo 2 and Ascari, the three fastest corners on the circuit. Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache confirmed a balance issue afterwards.
Every message from the weekend is in the Italian GP team radio.
The first chicane on lap one. Monza's Variante del Rettifilo takes cars from about 322 km/h down to 72, the largest speed change of the lap, and it arrives after a long run from a standing start with the field still packed. It is the single most likely place for the race to be decided or ruined.
Track limits. Friday produced 28 deleted laps across two practice sessions, overwhelmingly at Turn 1 and Turn 5. A circuit that generates that many deletions in practice generates them in a race.
Whether the safety car finally shows up. Three consecutive Italian Grands Prix without one is a streak, not a law. If it breaks on Sunday, the one-stop base case breaks with it, and everything above changes.
Everything in this preview came from timing and telemetry rather than the broadcast, because the broadcast does not show you tyre age or a long-run median.
The Formula Dream app runs a live Dashboard through the race: every car on the circuit map, and a timing tower with lap times, gaps and intervals, tyre compound and age, plus flag and safety car alerts as race control calls them. On a one-stop race the whole story is tyre age against gap, and that is exactly the column the television feed leaves out. You also get live driver radio as it is broadcast, and every FIA document of the weekend as it is published, which is where track limit warnings and penalties appear first.
Free, no subscription, no ads, independent. Not affiliated with Formula 1.
One, usually. Across 2023, 2024 and 2025 the most common number of stops per driver at Monza was one in every year, with a mean between 1.05 and 1.55. None of those three races had a safety car deployment.
53 laps in both 2024 and 2025, and 51 in 2023.
Charles Leclerc topped FP1 with a 1:23.008 on the medium tyre, leading a Ferrari 1-2. George Russell topped FP2 with a 1:22.559, with Leclerc second and Kimi Antonelli third.
Rarely. There was no safety car deployment in the 2023, 2024 or 2025 Italian Grand Prix. The circuit is wide with large run-off areas, so cars that go off usually rejoin without needing a recovery.
They improved the least. The field found an average of 0.741 seconds between FP1 and FP2 as the track rubbered in. Hamilton found 0.165s and Leclerc 0.329s, so everyone else moved past them.
Losing DRS was supposed to kill overtaking. Across nine dry circuits raced in both seasons, on-track position changes fell by 3.9%. That is all.
