Monza is used to excess. V12s, V10s, V8s screaming past the trees, cars knifing through the air at 350km/h and beyond. The “Temple of Speed” has built its mythology on one thing: flat‑out.
This weekend, it will still be flat‑out. It just won’t be fast.
Drivers are already warning that the Italian Grand Prix could feel “weird”, “confusing” and “not fantastic” from inside the cockpit, as the energy-starved 2026 cars face their toughest test yet. From the grandstands, it may look familiar. From the steering wheel, it will be anything but.
Slower than Hungary. At Monza.
When teams first ran the 2026 package in the simulator, Monza lit up the dashboards for all the wrong reasons.
Early models suggested an almost comical scenario: cars rocketing out of the chicanes, only to run out of battery halfway down the straight, shedding 30–40km/h before the braking zones. Some simulations even had drivers changing down gears in the middle of the straights just to keep the powertrain alive.
Regulation tweaks since then have calmed that extreme. The FIA’s changes to energy management – trimming recharge limits and capping deployment – have flattened out the speed curve. The cars no longer surge and then collapse. They just never reach the old peaks.
Top speeds of 350–360km/h? History, at least for now.
As Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad put it: “There's just not much battery. We don't actually go slower on the straights. We just don't use any.”
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri has already seen the absurdity on the sim. Monza, the benchmark for straight-line velocity, could be outgunned by the Hungaroring.
“I think in our sim running we were actually quicker on the front straight in Hungary than we were here,” he said. “It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's more that we just don't have the energy to spend.”
The latest runs suggest drivers won’t have to drop a gear on the main straight into Turn 1 anymore, but they may still be forced into seventh on the uphill run to Ascari. At Monza, of all places, they will be managing scarcity, not exploiting abundance.
No “super-clipping” circus – but no heroics either
One of the big fears heading into this weekend was the spectre of “super clipping” – savage energy harvesting that would have turned famous corners into neutered, coasting exercises.
Lesmo 1, Lesmo 2, Ascari: sections that define a lap at Monza could easily have become little more than rolling recharge zones.
The FIA’s decision to impose a 5MJ harvesting limit has at least stopped that. With so little energy available to recover in the first place, teams can’t afford to turn every braking zone into an exaggerated harvest-fest.
Piastri spelt it out: “If the harvest limit was higher, we would be super clipping everywhere, probably losing 30 or 40 km/h at the end of each straight, but with the [5MJ] harvest limit, the super clipping is a normalish amount, or a reasonable amount.”
So the cars won’t be chopping 40km/h off the straights just to feed the battery. The trade-off is different: less clipping, but less deployment too. Less drama, less punch, less of that old Monza violence.
Spa rewarded brains. Monza might not.
Across this season, drivers have learned how to game the new regulations. At energy-starved tracks, the fastest lap hasn’t always come from the bravest right foot, but from the cleverest energy plan.
At Spa, the logic flipped. Lifting in Pouhon, short-shifting out of corners, backing off where they once attacked – all to harvest more energy and then unleash it down the Kemmel and towards Blanchimont. It felt wrong, but it worked.
Monza won’t be so generous.
The circuit’s layout simply doesn’t offer the same number of corners to recharge between the long blasts. Two huge straights, then… not much.
Lando Norris summed up the problem: “I think the difference to Spa was that you had two big straights but you had lots of corners in-between that you could charge up and then deploy everything.
“Unfortunately here you have two long straights back-to-back, but even between them there's not really any corners. So, there's just no energy, there's just no power. You don't have an ability to charge, so it's just slow.”
The usual trick – sacrifice a bit of minimum speed to gain battery and claw it back later – simply doesn’t pay when there’s nowhere to claw it back. Monza strips the strategy bare. If the battery is empty, it stays empty.
Out-laps brisk, cool-downs crawling
If qualifying has often turned into a traffic chess game at Monza, this year adds another layer: battery state of charge.
The key to a lap will be simple on paper – start with as much energy as possible, end with as little as possible. The reality is more awkward.
Out-laps are governed by a 9MJ recharge limit. That, combined with the need to bring tyres into the right window, should at least keep drivers moving at a decent clip before they go for a time.
Cool-down laps are a different story. They’re capped at 5MJ. So if a driver runs a push-cool-push sequence, that middle tour of the circuit may turn into a crawl, as they tiptoe around trying not to overcharge and hit the ceiling too early.
Lindblad is not exactly thrilled at the prospect.
“I think the out-laps will be slow, but I don't think they'll be stupid,” he said.
“I think what won't be enjoyable is going to be cooldown laps, because the rules are different between out-laps and cool laps. So, in cool laps you'll be going very slow to try to charge the battery.”
Picture it: some cars almost dawdling on the racing line to nurse their state of charge, others thundering up behind them on full push laps. At a track where slipstream games already border on the chaotic, qualifying could be messy.
Auto-deploy, huge speed deltas – and a safety worry
Even the start of the lap has turned into a science project.
Teams and drivers now have to decide how much to spend exiting Parabolica to begin a flying lap. Burn too much there and they risk limping through the final part of the circuit with a flat battery. Save too much and they leave lap time on the table before they’ve even crossed the line.
Earlier in the year, drivers experimented with where to hit the throttle and how hard, often starting their lap in strange places to game the deployment rules. It created confusion and unpredictability.
That’s why, from Miami onwards, the sport moved to an automated system, quickly dubbed “auto-K”. Teams now pre-program when the battery deploys. The driver exits Parabolica flat, but the car only unleashes its stored energy at a set point.
At Monza, that could create a brutal speed difference between a car finishing a lap and one about to begin.
Lindblad has already seen a preview. “We saw it a bit in Zandvoort, but it was okay because of the banking,” he said. “There was a 50-60 km/h speed delta, so you could get out of the way and let the guys through.
“Here it's even more - and it could become a bit dangerous. So, starting the lap won't be easy, to have it full, have the tyres ready.
“But even just from traffic, from safety, it's not great. We need a better battery.”
That’s the sting in the tale. Monza, the place where Formula 1 has always come to celebrate pure speed, will instead expose the limits of the 2026 philosophy more starkly than anywhere else.
The Temple of Speed will still echo to the sound of F1 this weekend. The question is whether those echoes will be of progress – or of a formula that has gone too far in holding its cars back.
