Il Tempio
della Velocità

In the spring of 1922 a stretch of woodland in the Parco di Monza was handed to the engineers, and in just one hundred and ten days they returned a racetrack. It opened that September, only the third permanent circuit ever built, following Brooklands in England and the great speedway at Indianapolis. The doors have stayed open ever since.

From the very first season of the Formula One World Championship in 1950, the Italian Grand Prix has been run here every single year but one — 1980, when the circuit closed for renovation and the race decamped to Imola. No venue has hosted more World Championship rounds. None has gathered a more devoted crowd than the tifosi who flood the banking each September.

The locals call it La Pista Magica — the magic track — and the magic is speed. For decades the layout has demanded the lowest downforce of the calendar and rewarded sheer courage on the brakes. Cars run at full throttle for roughly four-fifths of the lap, threading a needle between the long straights and the brutal chicanes that punctuate them.

The ghosts are everywhere: the crumbling concrete of the 1955 banked oval still curving silently through the trees; the names of champions and the names of the lost. To stand at the exit of the Parabolica as the field streams past is to understand why this place is spoken of as a temple rather than a track.