italian grand prix

It's the italian grand prix this weekend from Monza.

Monza is one of the fastest tracks on the current circuit and is not that far off being an Indi-car style oval circuit.  Indeed, I seem to recall the old, banked circuit was an oval.  I mean, it has a few chicanes and that, but if you were to take an oval and stretch it and put a dog leg in it, that wouldn't be too far off of Monza.

Anyway, the point is that it's a very fast circuit and the race often doesn't take much more than an hour to run.

It's normally an okay race.  It doesn't tend to have a lot of overtaking, though it is possible.  Part of the issue is that being so fast and having so few corners it's not often they make mistakes, so there's not much chance to take advantage of that.

Still, it's usually a good race for Ferrari who tend to build a car that does well on high speed circuits.  Hopefully therefore Alonso should do well, which should keep the championship alive.

There's also the possibility that if the Mercedes can get on pole in qualifying then they'll be able to dominate and hold the others back.  That was part of the key as to why they did well in Hungary - get on pole and stay there.

Of course that's also the general Red Bull tactic, but then the car (deliberately) doesn't tend to have the highest top speed so they may struggle to achieve it.