How the controversial curb changes really changed Monza

The €21 million upgrade to the Monza circuit has been a major talking point ahead of Formula 1’s 2024 Italian Grand Prix. Now, however, we’ve had the chance to see the real impact of the controversial kerb changes from the track.

Autosport headed to the famous Ascari chicane to watch the cars navigate the three-part scene that leads onto the Monza straight, now that the kerbs have been lowered and flattened.

This was a particular point of contention for the F1 drivers during Thursday’s media day, with RB’s Daniel Ricciardo saying “it’s very flat at the moment” while Mercedes driver George Russell thought “it would give the drivers the opportunity to get the hang of it” from these changes.

After leaving the paddock and seeing the Renault engine crew protesting against Alpine’s idea of ​​becoming a Mercedes engine customer (those in the grandstand beyond the start line stood up to show their banner and politely applauded Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly as they came out of the pits at the start of FP1), we turned sharply right to leave the long road to Turn 1 and crossed the midfield to reach Ascari.

As we walk through the blazing late summer sun here in Lombardy, the circuit commentators are becoming more and more enthusiastic. Real enthusiastically about Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s opening laps. Their comments reach a climax when he grounds Russell’s Mercedes W15 top with his first flyer and then there is a certain agony in the air when he slams it into the Parabolica barriers on his second attempt just as we approach our Ascari finish point.

After a 13 minute delay we can finally see that the drivers are indeed riding on the kerbs a lot more here compared to their 2023 lines around the old kerbs. These had drains running slightly down from the main kerbs that drivers would try to thread their tires through to record their trajectories.

The new kerbside driving is particularly evident in the second and third parts of the Ascari sequence: the cars still remain wide in the first left-hand bend, meaning they can maintain a higher speed in the longer second part.

The Aston Martin Vantage Safety Car

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

Lando Norris is an early standout, hitting the kerbs at the third apex much harder than the other front-runners, and in particular his team-mate Oscar Piastri. But Norris doesn’t cut this point off as drastically as was feared on Thursday. It just doesn’t seem like he’s compromising the track limits, nor does it seem like he’s taking away from the trackside spectacle.

What we learned most during the session is how the Williams drivers struggle time and again to get through the Ascari complex during push laps.

Just past the halfway point, Alex Albon impressively saves a huge rearward snap between the apexes of the second and third Ascari elements, while his new – and temporary – team-mate Franco Colapinto spins so much that his car almost drifts through Ascari. This doesn’t incur much of a penalty for Williams, however, as Albon still finishes eighth in FP1.

Towards the end of the session, the changes Mercedes have made to Lewis Hamilton’s car have left the car sparking from the floor at the rear after skating over the three apex kerbs, but the seven-time world champion isn’t exactly attacking them too hard. These are still ground-effect F1 cars, after all.

Max Verstappen provides a handy example here of the different challenges on new and used rubber. As he sets the 1m21.676s that will eclipse FP1, the Red Bull is completely planted by every part of Ascari – jumping between the two later apexes that we can actually see from our vantage point at the exit of the sequence as if they were straight-line trajectories through the corners.

In contrast, Piastri and Hamilton regularly need a push as they complete the long runs in the late session. The former seemed to struggle with his McLaren early in Ascari as the wind picked up with 20 minutes to go, but towards the end of his long run his rear also wobbles regularly between the second and third apex.

It seems that concerns about the Ascari kerb changes spoiling the spectacle of Monza and risking the circuit limits nightmare that F1 thought it had just escaped are somewhat overblown at this point. The drivers are now riding on the kerbs, but the spectacle from the track looks little different to when we got here in 2023.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Verstappen’s leading time is almost exactly one second faster than the time he led the FP1 session in 2023, but back then he was using the hard tyre instead of the soft. Red Bull joins the pack in looking at how the new, darker tarmac penalizes the tyres from the start of this event.

This, plus the usual engine mode and fuel load warnings, need to be considered in anything we report from the FP1 trackside, but a comparison of Verstappen’s year-on-year GPS data traces is revealing nonetheless. Here, the grip levels offered by the new tarmac will also make a significant difference that’s worth bearing in mind.

Interestingly, Verstappen’s minimum speed in Ascari during his fastest lap in 2024 is 175.4 km/h, while in 2023 it was 183.4 km/h.

The data also shows that Verstappen eased off the throttle a fraction longer after Ascari’s first apex than he has at this stage in 2023, as he waited for the car to move wider onto the new kerbs before hitting the throttle again and maintaining it through the rest of the complex.

But let’s not forget that this is only FP1 and, apart from Antonelli, the drivers are only just beginning to push the limits of Monza’s lightning-fast challenge…

Watch: Why Drivers Are Not Impressed With Monza Updates – News from the Formula 1 Italian GP Paddock