Red is the Colour they Love … or benvenuti a Monza

Half way through the season and we have already a very entertaining part of the season behind us, keeping in mind the most entertaining stuff is still to come.

Heading to the next stop, which is Monza, reminds me of how much I love these old tracks. Nothing against the hight-tech air-conditioned press rooms with some perfect but in a way sterile working environment at the new tracks all around the World, but I just love these Spa's, Monza's, Barcelona's and even Budapest with it's mid-eighties run down facilities and non-functional photographer's room, where somebody just needs to push in the right way to open your locker with all your equipment inside it and with this telecommunication company charging us about as much as a five star hotel overnight stay fee for the internet connection in order to make us able to advertise their country - breakfast excluded.

But there is even the one that I really miss at most and which since few years now isn't on the FIA list as an F1 venue.

When I speak about the "Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari" which is the official name of the Imola circuit memories come up. You may call it a nostalgy, I don't know and it might even sound a bit weird, but I really miss these old pits with that old race control tower and it's fading Ferrari sign on the fallen wall. I miss the pitlane with it's cracked and so many times repaired surface making it such a wonderful picture when overlooking the high-tech glittering F1 cars dancing on it before entering the wonderful World of Tamburello, Villeneuve, Variante Alta, Rivazza and all these corners with beautiful names…

All these witnesses of the time did remind us the glory of the past, the winners and the losers, the fast ones and even the dead ones...

The paddock and it's facilities were old and obsolete and paradoxically so beautiful. It only took you a few minutes after entering it, to feel that soul of that place. You could smell racing in the air and I don't mean petrol. The sound of the engines combing and vibrating for so many years the garage walls and its old metal doors, you could feel the tradition, the history and even the passion for the sport we all love. That track in it's old version remains in my mind as the myth and a magic place.

Starting traditionally in Australia earlier this year, it took us about 5 months of waiting, 60 flights of flying and 11 races of racing until we will get to another great of the greats on the F1 calender, the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza.

Monza to me is a real "Vecchia Signora" of F1 and it truly is an Epic one..It only takes less than two hours to realise, where the heart of Formula One really is. If England would be the brain, the birth place of Formula One, than Italy to me is the place, where Formula One got baptised, the place where the heart and the emotional part of that wonderful F1 body really is.

It takes exactly 53 laps listening to this fantastic V8's orchestra until you understand what F1 really is for the Italians. Once the race is done they climb the protection fences only to jump over the armco and storm the start-finish straight to transform it in just a few minutes into a colourful party street, while taking everything with them, what is not screwed or glued down to the concrete as a reminder of that glory day. They light up flares, roll out a massive Ferrari flag and climb the pitwall to maybe celebrate one of their red dressed hero's on the podium.... They are the heart, the passion and the soul of Monza, the Tifosi….

Some of the non-Ferrari drivers like Vettel or Raikkonen would still get away with it on the podium with an applause or just a few wows, especially if you don't try to speak Italian to them like Lewis did last year, but usually there is no room for sympathies for other teams, but the one with the prancing horse on the car.

You can were a blue, silver, black or even a green overall, but Tifosi they only see red, the colour the Bulls love so much...

They can't tame them, but let's see if they can harm them...