F1 Lap Time Watch: 2024 Italian Grand Prix

Before the Italian Grand Prix weekend began Carlos Sainz Jnr said McLaren have become the team to beat in Formula 1 because they are the only team whose updates have worked as intended at every race.

The first two days of running at Monza appeared to bear that out. For the fifth time this year, and the fourth race in a row, the MCL38 set the fastest individual lap time of any car.

The competitive picture has gone through three phases in 2024. First, Red Bull were undoubtedly the team to beat, reeling off the quickest time at all of the first seven races bar Bahrain, where Ferrari were 0.02% quicker (but Max Verstappen still snuck pole position).

Then from the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in May to the Hungarian Grand Prix last month, the identity of the fastest team changed every weekend. During that seven-round run Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren swapped places at the top of the pile.

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But now it seems McLaren have the edge. Their margin of superiority hasn’t yet hit the kind of peak Red Bull enjoyed earlier in the year – an average of 0.23% compared to 0.39% in Red Bull’s best four-race run – the upper hand is undoubtedly theirs.

Last year Norris said part of the reason Red Bull had become so dominant was because they had such a good car they were able to focus on extracting the best from small details. Now Red Bull have taken a mis-step with their car (team principal Christian Horner admitted that even reverting to a previous specification did not solve their handling problems) and McLaren are able to focus on these decisive details.

“We’ve definitely been taking some smaller steps forward,” he said after taking pole position today. “But some of the upgrades we had have been track-specific. The rear wing that we had which was the main part of the upgrade last weekend, we don’t have it again here. So it’s not like what worked perfectly well there, works here.

“So we had that, but we also had the rear wing again this weekend. So specific things, but it’s not like it revolutionised the car or made the car feel like it’s a lot better. It’s just a bit more efficient.

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“It’s smaller things, but those smaller things really make big differences in the end. If you have one or two smaller snaps [of oversteer] over a single lap, you can gain half a tenth, one tenth quite quickly because the tyres are in a better condition, the temperature’s less, and things like that. They’ve definitely helped.”

Red Bull’s plight has been amplified this weekend by the progress their other two main rivals have made. Ferrari brought the biggest upgrade of any team for their home race and produced their most competitive performance outside of Bahrain and Monaco, where they were fastest. Mercedes still don’t seem able to get their car working as they want on every lap, but George Russell wrung third place on the grid out of it.

Those two teams close to within 0.2s of McLaren. So while Red Bull were little further behind in real terms at Monza than they were at Zandvoort – 0.3s – suddenly Verstappen has six cars instead of him instead of one. The vital question for the final third of the season will be whether Red Bull can correct this blip.

Although the field posted higher straight-line speeds this year compared to last, the current generation of F1 cars are still not at the same performance level as their predecessors of 2019-21. That’s even with the benefit of a fresh, smoother track surface and a DRS zone on the main straight which has been extended by 103 metres.

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2024 Italian Grand Prix

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