The 2023 Italian Grand Prix

Last summer I had the opportunity to attend the Italian Grand Prix in Monza. It was my first race since attending the US Grand Prix in 2016, due to that I decided to splurge and get one of the F1 Experiences packages.

While parts of the experience were cool, as a whole it felt bit overpriced for what you got, and the main experience I was looking forward to was quite disorganized and little was done to reimburse for the failed experience. Although it was nice to have someone plan out the package and all I had to do was show up and enjoy, I felt that there should have been a little more included.

The package was called the Hero | Laterale Destra which included some unique experiences and the three day ticket to the race events. Everything kicked off on Thursday afternoon where we had the opportunity to take a photo with the championship trophy, take a guided track tour, and access to the pit lane.

We started with the championship trophy photo opportunity. Which was cool since they took the photos of you on the starting grid standing next to what Max would surely win that season. Since there was quite a few people who also had the same package it was quick fire the photo and move on so you didn't get too much time to look at the trophy. It was also cool because the photographer taking the photo Kym Illman, who is a well known F1 photographer. So now I get to say I've been photographed by Kym Illman himself.

After the trophy photo we shuffled over to the semi trucks waiting to drive us around the track with two F1 Experiences ambassadors giving us some fun facts about the track and iconic moments at various corners. Which was really cool since Monza is quite the historical track, and only became more of a place of history after the race on Sunday. Also now I get to say I've been driven around on the back of a truck around Monza, although we did not get to drive around the old Monza banked track.

The highlight of Thursday really had to be access to the pit lane since you got to get up close to see the teams prepping the cars for the weekend. Since it was Thursday, which usually is just a media day for the drivers, we only saw a few drivers floating around since most of them were in the paddock area giving interviews. Most teams were mainly practicing their pit stops and had their cars in various levels of disassembly. The only team who had something more special going on was Alfa Romeo because they had just unveiled their new car going into the weekend, the 33 Stradale. They also had a special livery for the team since Monza, being close to Milan was their home race, but it was also Ferrari's home race so guess they were fighting over that.

Friday was the first day of on-track action, so we got to see F1 cars go through FP1 and FP2. Not only was there F1, but Monza also had F2 and F3 support races as well as Porsche Supercup. Getting to see all of that was quite exciting, and made the tickets that more worth it since not all race weekends get all the support races. The highlight of this day was supposed to be the Inside F1 experience planned for the evening, but it was far from that.

Inside F1 was supposed to be an evening of food, drink and getting to hear stories up close from drivers and various well known F1 people. The presenter was Sean Kelly, who is a prominent F1 stats guy, and he would be joined by various people throughout the evening to give us an inside look to F1. His part of the presentation was good and engaging, although the crowd made it so hard because you could tell no one cared about what he had to say and was just chatting away while he was trying to do his thing. This was also probably due in part to the room they held this in because it was a long narrow building and with the amount of people there was no way to have everyone in a position where they could see what was going on up front. Luckily we snagged some good seats so I think we took away the most from the experience. We also got to hear from Bernd Mayländer, who is the F1 Safety Car driver, so that was cool to hear about what a race weekend looks like for him since you see a lot of him during a race, usually, but never get to hear about his experience. The highlight of the evening was supposed to be a chat with Kevin Magnussen, but he never showed because he was caught up in a late running drivers meeting. Which would have been nice if they told us that ahead of time, but they just kept dragging it out further and further until it was late enough that there was no chance he was making it. If the food at this event would have been better maybe I wouldn't have been as mad, but of course the food was quite bad finger foods and by the time the event was over and we were back in town it was too late to grab a bite to eat.

After Friday the package inclusions were over with and it was just regular race weekend events from there on out. The seats that came included with the package were the main grandstands, so that was exciting to experience. Getting to see the cars get prepped on the grid for the start of the race as well as some great battles leading into the infamous turn 1 at Monza. We got to see multiple race starts at the beginning because Yuki Tsunoda couldn't make it all the way around of the formation lap. Which was funny to experience because all the cars made their way back to the grid to restart the formation lap, but the FIA hadn't given the command to let the teams back onto the grid so there was a moment of awkwardness where the drivers had already turned off their cars in prep of the restart but no one was running over.

A unique thing to experience at Monza in 2023 was where the maximum lap time rule was instituted in order to help prevent people from going around the track too slowly because they were trying to get themselves in a better position for their flying lap. This is also why Kevin Magnussen missed the Inside F1 presentation because he was too busy debating with the FIA over this ruling.

With the excitement with the entire weekend there will be two things that always stand out to me about getting to experience a race at this iconic track. First it was seeing Max Verstappen achieve a record of 10 wins in a row, surpassing Sebastian Vettel and who knows how long it'll be until that record is taken away from him. Second was the photo I was able to capture of the two Ferrari drivers battling it out for 3rd at the very end. But also getting to experience an F1 race overseas was also quite an experience since there were so many others that traveled just as far to experience a race at this iconic track.