Start, Monza, 2018

New $17 million deal to keep Italian GP at Monza

2020 F1 season

Posted on

| Written by and

Monza’s place on the 2020 F1 calendar is set to be confirmed as the race promoters have agreed a new deal at a reduced price.

The Italian Grand Prix, which has been part of the world championship since it began in 1950, is expected to sign a new deal to remain on the calendar for five more years, taking it up to 2024.

The race promoters were seeking to obtain a ‘haircut’ on their fee from Formula One Management. As RaceFans previously reported this year’s race, the last in its current contract, will cost $24 million.

A senior source at the Italian Grand Prix told RaceFans the promoters have secured a reduction in the race fee to $17 million.

Monza will hold the 70th world championship Italian Grand Prix this year, all bar one of which were held at the parkland circuit north of Milan. The only exception was the 1980 event, held at Imola.

The news means Monza will continue to host the world championship during it centenary celebration in in 2022.

Four other races on the 2019 F1 calendar – the Spanish, British, German and Mexican Grands Prix – do not have contracts to hold races next year.

Don't miss anything new from RaceFans

Follow RaceFans on social media:

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2019 F1 season

Browse all 2019 F1 season articles

21 comments on “New $17 million deal to keep Italian GP at Monza”

  1. What are they doing with the circuit anyway, are they still going ahead with the removal of the first chicane and the reprofiling of the Curva Grande?

    1. where did you hear about that? @sam3110

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        1st May 2019, 1:05

        https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/a65b9y/proposed_changes_to_monza_for_2022/

        Apparently it’s the 2nd chicane they want to get rid of – not the 1st one.

        1. @petebaldwin, the documentation submitted for planning indicated that they were going to get rid of the Rettifilio chicane in its current position, and instead there would be a new chicane installed partway round what is currently Curva Grande. https://www.racefans.net/2016/05/24/monza-planning-tear-first-chicane/

          However, there seems to have been relatively few announcements since then on the proposal – whether that was due to discussions over the Italian GP, or whether that was due to other issues with their proposal, is not yet clear.

          1. @sam3110 @petebaldwin Last I heard neither is likely to happen.

            The initial proposal of moving the 1st chicane & removing curve grande didn’t get positive feedback from anyone they asked as it was felt the changes would be worse from a racing standpoint. It was felt the new 1st chicane would be harder to overtake at due to the kink before it with the shorter run between it & the 2nd chicane also making the 2nd chicane a less possible overtaking spot.
            It was also felt that since a lot of good racing tends to happen on the run through curve grande to the 2nd chicane that it would be wrong to alter it.

            There also unlikely to go ahead with removing the 2nd chicane for similar reasons. Removing that would remove one of the best overtaking spots & it’s felt that removing that & going for a faster Lesmo (More like the original version of the corner) may not be the best trade-off in terms of racing because overtaking into Lesmo wouldn’t be as possible as it is the current 2nd chicane due to the lack of a braking zone (Even at a higher approach speed it would be more a lift/downshift than any significant braking).

            TBH I think the only changes they need to make is remove the sausage kerbs at the chicane & put the kerb use more in the drivers hands again which would make it a far greater challenge. When drivers could throw the cars over the kerbs you had to strike the right balance because you could lose a lot of time by using too little but lose just as much time by using too much. With the sausage kerbs that have been there since 2009 it’s now far more straightforward as there’s now a more defined line since you just have to avoid the sausages.
            I also think it was a far more interesting & somewhat iconic visual watching the cars be thrown over the kerbs as they were.

  2. This is good news. The facilities at the track for both teams and spectators need quite a bit of improvement.

    Hopefully they will leave the racing circuit itself alone though.

  3. Good news indeed. Monza is the last real high-speed track on the F1 calendar and I wish that there was at least one another. But that is not going to happen, as the focus for the future clearly is more on the city streets…and the old Österreichring and Silverstone were reconstructed to slower circuits. By the way…who are those RaceFabs?!

    1. @gpfacts: The Fab 2 – Keith & Dieter.

      1. Hazel and Josh cry into their beer and beer-flavoured water (respectively). And Craig fashions a carbon fiber dagger with your name on it. @jimmi-cynic

        1. @phylyp: No need for tears. Or daggers. Beer is still a possibility. Or explanation.

          The byline on the post only had the Fab 2: Keith & Dieter.

    2. @gpfacts, the term “lower speed” is still something of a relative term, given that, in 2018, the average speed for the pole position lap was a fraction over 153mph (or nearly 247kph) around Silverstone. The Osterreichring, meanwhile, in its current format still had an average lap speed that was within 1kph of the average of Silverstone (just over 246kph on average).

      What that means is that Silverstone and the Red Bull Ring are in fact the circuits with the second and third highest average lap speeds on the calendar, and even in their current configurations, the average lap speeds are still fairly close to their historical peaks.

  4. That’s a real shame. I’d totally prefer Italian GP to alternate between Imola and Monza.

    1. I wouldn’t call it a “real shame”, that’s a bit of an overstatement, don’t you think?, considered we are risking to lose this venue every year or two

      1. @alfa145 If my options to whether have Italian GP to alternate between Imola and Monza or lose Monza I’d take the first option. It’s such a boring track which produces dull races GPs year after year. I wouldn’t miss it at all. Less Monza the better calendar.

  5. More haircut. More promotion budget. Less and less team earning. FOM really need more arab tracks.

    1. @ruliemaulana: No worries. Liberty can just take the shortfall out of their wildly successful and reliable streaming service

  6. Good news. Hopefully, the track layout would be left alone, though.

  7. So they have allowed Monza a lower fee that they are demanding on Silverstone. Hmmmm.

  8. There’s a lot of discussion about potentially changing the layout at monza and it occurs to me that we rarely question how safe the chicanes actually are. without the chicanes there would be few big deceleration points (lesmo 1 and the parabolica, neither of which are ‘slow’ corners in current machinery) so the average speed would become very high indeed, indicating a high element of danger.

    however, has anyone considered that the current layout (3 BIG deceleration zones at the chicanes) is potentially more dangerous because of how unstable cars can be under braking and the possibility of a massive speed deltas if brakes/wings/tyres/suspension fail on one or more cars. additionally, due to the layout there is the risk of a car missing the chicane at high speed and hitting something beyond it, like another car – which would not happen at somewhere like the A1-ring, which has big deceleration zones, but all into hairpins. in this respect, a track like monza (or the old hockenheim) is far less safe than a flowing high speed track like silverstone or spa.

    the F1 safety paradigm is vastly different now to how it was in the 1970s (when the chicanes were introduced) and modern cars round a chicane-less Monza would behave very differently – curva grande would now be easy flat, so would Vialone/ascari. to my mind only lesmo 1 could present a safety challenge, in terms or runoff and track width, given it would be one of the few outbraking zones (cars already approach parabolica at around 200mph, so a little extra wouldn’t make that much difference. also the track is relatively wide there).

    just a thought.

  9. Shame. I wish Monza would be off the calendar. Short races, poor racing, boring track.

    There’s a time for everything and Monza’s has passed.

Comments are closed.