Italian Grand Prix 2015: 5 Bold Predictions for Monza Race
The 2015 Italian Grand Prix will be the final race of Formula One's traditional "European season" and the last chance for the teams to get some morale-boosting points on the board before the forthcoming "flyaways."
Monza is one of the oldest permanent racing facilities in Europe. It started life as a shrine to speed and, though a few chicanes have been added over the years, it remains the fastest circuit on the modern F1 calendar.
Horsepower is king, so Williams, Lotus and Force India will approach the weekend in an optimistic mood. The three teams are powered by the mighty Mercedes engine and, though none will expect to beat the works W06s, the final slot on the podium is certainly up for grabs.
Ferrari should also figure in that particular tussle, but Red Bull look unlikely to join them. Tactical engine penalties will see the two RB11s start from the rear of the field—but we still think they'll have enough to challenge for points.
The same cannot be said for McLaren. Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button may have three world titles between them, but the Honda engine in their MP4-30s is a far from a finished product. They'll suffer on the long straights of Monza and may find themselves uncomfortably close to the two Manors.
Back at the front, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg look set for another private battle for the win.
Here's how we expect that fight, and the rest of the weekend, to pan out.
McLaren Will Be Closer to Manor Than They'll Be to the Points
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McLaren had their worst weekend of the year in Spa. After qualifying 17th and 18th, they started 19th and 20th after taking grid-drop penalties.
In the race, Jenson Button developed a hybrid power deployment issue and finished 14th. Fernando Alonso's MP4-30 remained healthy, but he still ended up 40 seconds away from a world championship point.
It's tempting to think it can't get any worse for the boys and girls from Woking—but we think it will.
The team's cars were woefully slow on the long straights of Spa; in qualifying, FIA data shows even the Manor of Will Stevens, using a 2014 Ferrari power unit, reached a higher speed on the run up to Les Combes. The next-slowest cars were considerably quicker still, as this table shows:
| Valtteri Bottas | Williams | 331.2 |
| Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull | 329.7 |
| Will Stevens | Manor | 319.7 |
| Jenson Button | McLaren | 318.3 |
| Fernando Alonso | McLaren | 317.9 |
| Roberto Merhi | Manor | 316.9 |
Monza is all about straight-line speed. There simply aren't enough corners on the circuit for McLaren to make up the time they'll lose to the points-contenders on the four long straights.
Manor, though, will benefit from this dearth of turns; they won't lose as much time to McLaren as they normally would.
So we think that for the first time in 2015, Manor will be closer to McLaren at the end of the race than McLaren are to the points.
That is, assuming McLaren finish...
Red Bull Will Be Surprisingly Competitive
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Red Bull surprised a few people with their impressive straight-line speed at Spa.
Their Renault engine is down on power, but the chassis was sufficiently good through the infield that the team could afford to run a visibly skinnier rear wing than Mercedes-powered teams like Lotus, Williams and Force India.
FIA data shows Daniil Kvyat took advantage of this, and a hefty slipstream, to hit 345 kilometres an hour at the end of the Kemmel Straight during the race—the highest speed recorded at Spa all weekend.
The difference in wing angle at Monza—which is light on corners—won't be as great, because even the Mercedes runners will go super-skinny, and the two Bulls may well be starting from the rear of the grid. Autosport reports that the team is likely to make "strategic" engine changes ahead of the race.
However, Red Bull should still be capable of salvaging something from the weekend. Both Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat drove exceptionally well at Monza last year and seem to enjoy the circuit, while the RB11 should be quick through Parabolica and the Lesmos.
They'll very likely be starting from the back row, so they won't be bothering the top six. But expect Red Bull to have enough pace to get at least one of their cars into the points at the end.
The Mercedes Drivers Will Have a Proper Fight for the Win
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The championship table tells us Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are embroiled in another tight, two-way scrap for the title—but they seem to be avoiding each other during the races.
If we ignore the opening laps of the 11 grands prix so far, Hamilton and Rosberg haven't had a single proper on-track battle for position in 2015. Last season, we saw them duel on a number of occasions; this year, the closest they've come to actually racing each other was a two-corner play fight after Hamilton made a mistake at the safety-car restart at Silverstone.
Has there ever been a title contest with so little interaction between the protagonists?
Rosberg needed to win in Spa but didn't; Hamilton's lead is now 28 points, and the German cannot allow it to grow any larger. Maybe there have been occasions this year when Rosberg could have been accused of settling for second—that won't happen at Monza.
Hamilton, for his part, has a sufficiently large lead that he could probably get away with accepting a runners-up spot—but that isn't how he races. He doesn't want it to go down to the wire again and, like Rosberg, won't hold back if presented with an opportunity.
The Mercedes pair fought over the lead at Monza last season, Hamilton coming out on top after Rosberg locked up going into Turn 1.
Maybe it's a hunch, or perhaps wishful thinking, but we expect to see their first proper all-Mercedes on-track fight occurring this coming weekend.
They can't stay apart forever.
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Lotus Will Win the Battle of the Mercedes-Powered Teams
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Williams were expected to do well in Belgium, but the weekend didn't go entirely to plan.
The main problem for both Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa was their race pace on the yellow-marked soft tyre. Williams head of vehicle performance, Rob Smedley, told Sky Sports both drivers had struggled to get the tyres working early in the race.
The team are aiming to find a solution in time for Monza, where the soft will again feature—but it seems to be a recurring theme. Autosport reported Williams had struggled with the softs in China, and F1 Fanatic's lap chart shows Bottas was very slow on softs in the opening stint of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
It's likely the issue will again raise its head in Italy, ruining their podium hopes.
Force India's performance also went against expectations in Spa—but in a positive way. Their cars were mighty in a straight line—Sergio Perez's maximum speed during qualifying was a full five kilometres per hour faster than the quickest non-Force India.
The VJM08 was a rocket ship in the race, too, as Perez held off a string of cars to record a season-best result of fifth.
But it was only exceptional in a straight line. The middle-sector times from Spa suggest they were running substantially less wing than their rivals—when everyone bolts on their full Monza-spec, low-downforce packages, the straight-line advantage Force India enjoyed will disappear.
Without it, they'll be back to where they have been all season: struggling to break free of the midfield pack—leaving Lotus free to fight for their second successive podium.
Amid the controversy over Sebastian Vettel's late tyre failure, it was easy to forget that had Romain Grosjean not received a five-place grid penalty for changing his gearbox, he wouldn't have needed the Ferrari's right-rear Pirelli to explode.
In clean air, the Frenchman was the third-quickest man on the track—had he started where he qualified, fourth, he wouldn't have been behind Vettel at that stage of the race.
Also, Grosjean was quoted last week by Julien Billiotte of F1i, saying that, in theory, Monza is even more suited to the E23 than Spa was.
The scrap between the Mercedes-customer teams will be tight, but we're backing Lotus to come out on top.
Top Rookie: Max Verstappen
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None of the 2015 rookies are likely to come away from Monza with a hefty haul of points. Roberto Merhi of Manor has no chance, while Felipe Nasr's Sauber team—despite receiving a new specification of Ferrari engine for Spa—seem to be falling farther and farther behind.
So the fight for top rookie in Italy will again come down to the two Toro Rosso boys. Straight-line speed is not their forte, but we can see at least one STR10 finishing in the points—and Max Verstappen is in the best form of his short F1 career.
The youngest driver on the grid followed up his fourth-place finish at the Hungaroring with an aggressive drive to eighth at Spa.
Though it didn't quite go according to plan, his attempt at passing Nasr around the outside of Blanchimont demonstrated not only a lack of fear, but an absolute confidence in his own abilities as a driver.
No professional would put himself in that kind of position unless he knew it was something he could handle; for someone still a month short of his 18th birthday to have that belief is staggering.
Verstappen isn't going to walk it—Carlos Sainz Jr., though less spectacular, has been just as quick as his team-mate in 2015. The Spaniard also has a good record at the circuit, having won at Monza last year in Formula Renault 3.5. Verstappen has never raced here.
But Monza is track which rewards bravery, precision under braking and where a reduced DRS effect—the skinny wings produce less drag than usual in their non-DRS form—puts overtaking back into the hands of the driver.
Verstappen should be in his element.
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