The Formula One season continues at Monza this weekend for the Italian Grand Prix – Ferrari’s home race. Ferrari has contested every world championship Italian GP – but how many times has it won the event?
The first Ferrari F1 winner at Monza
Ferrari’s first F1 victory at Monza actually preceded the world championship.
Alberto Ascari scored the win in 1949, a year before the world championship was inaugurated.
The Italian racer would go onto claim the squad’s first world championship Italian GP success in 1951.
His victory in the Ferrari 375 machine kept him in contention for the title, although Juan Manuel Fangio would eventually take it.
Ascari would defend the race win in 1952 – in the middle of his seven-race F1 winning streak.
He would be killed testing a sportscar at Monza in 1955.
Triumph and tragedy for Ferrari at Monza
The Scuderia would not win again on home soil until 1960 – in an odd event.
In 1960, the British teams boycotted the event which the Italian organisers opted to run on the banking.
Phil Hill would take the last ever F1 win for a front engined car in a Ferrari 1-2-3.
A year later, Enzo Ferrari had finally allowed the engine to be moved behind the driver as his eponymous squad dominated.
Heading to Monza, Hill and teammate Wolfgang von Trips were in contention for the championship.
On the second lap, von Trips made contact with the Lotus of Jim Clark approaching the Parabolica.
von Trips was launched into the crowd, killing him and 15 spectators.
Hill, who had been battling engine problems all weekend won the race, and through the demise of his only challenger, the world championship.
It was his third, and final F1 grand prix win.
Having made the switch to four wheels from two, John Surtees took victory in 1964 on his way to the title for Ferrari.
Surtees’ title success in 1964 still makes him the only person in history to win a world championship in cars and on motorcycles.
To date, the last Italian to win the Italian GP for Ferrari at Monza is Ludovico Scarfiotti.
Remarkably, it was his sole grand prix victory in just his fourth F1 start.
Scarfiotti would never again finish higher than fourth in a grand prix.
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The last Ferrari driver to win the title at Monza
Clay Regazzoni won twice at Monza in a Ferrari F1 car.
The first came in 1970 – the weekend where championship leader Jochen Rindt was killed.
Fallow years for the Scuderia followed as aerodynamics started to overtake pure engine grunt.
In 1975, Regazzoni claimed his second Italian GP win for Ferrari, as teammate Niki Lauda took his first world title.
Four years later, South African Jody Scheckter became the third Ferrari driver to win the world title at Monza.
In the team-leader role, Scheckter led home teammate Gilles Villeneuve (below) – the Canadian dutifully deferring to the other car.
It would be the last Ferrari F1 win at Monza, and indeed world title in Enzo Ferrari’s lifetime.
The most emotional Ferrari win at Monza
Aged 90, Enzo Ferrari died on August 14th, 1988.
The Italian GP was run a few weeks later, as the McLaren’s of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost looked to extend their winning run.
McLaren had won every race of the season thus far, but both hit trouble at Monza.
Prost conked out with Honda engine trouble, but Senna collided with a back-marker.
Instead of simply waiting to pass Williams driver Jean-Louis Schlesser on the following straight, Senna tried to pass through the first chicane.
Despite his best efforts, Schlesser collided with Senna, beaching the McLaren.
Ferrari duo Gerhard Berger and Michele Alboreto would take a 1-2 finish in front of the Tifosi.
McLaren would win 15 of 16 races in 1988.
The Michael Schumacher era
Between 1996-2006, Michael Schumacher would win the Italian GP five times in a Ferrari.
Having moved from Benetton for 1996, one of three wins that year was delivered at the Autodromo, adding another two years later.
Schumacher’s first title with Ferrari came in 2000, and so did another Italian GP win – in a race a marshal was killed by flying debris.
He would add further successes in 2003 and 2006 – after the latter of which he announced his first retirement from F1.
During his period as Schumacher’s Ferrari sidekick, Rubens Barrichello would add a further two wins.
The Brazilian claimed the top step on the podium in 2002 and 2004 – ironically the two most dominant seasons in Schumacher’s five-year title winning run.
Two wins in the 2010s
Fernando Alonso was signed as the big headline driver for the Scuderia in 2010.
Winning on debut in Bahrain was a good start, but Ferrari struggled to keep up with Red Bull and McLaren in the first half of the season.
After the summer break, Alonso put on a charge which included his second Monza win in F1 (after McLaren in 2007).
Arguably, it was here his Ferrari F1 career peaked as a disastrous strategy call in the Abu Dhabi finale handed Sebastian Vettel the title.
Vettel himself could not add to Ferrari’s tally of Monza wins, coming closest with second place in 2015.
It would be Charles Leclerc who ended Ferrari’s nine-year drought in front of the Tifosi in 2019.
Holding off a Lewis Hamilton attack, Leclerc drove a magnificent race to record his second grand prix win, and Ferrari’s 19th world championship success at Monza.
For his part, Vettel spun out early in the race, and finished a lapped 13th.
Ferrari F1 winners at Monza
- Alberto Ascari – 1951, 1952
- Phil Hill – 1960, 1961
- John Surtees – 1964
- Ludovico Scarfiotti – 1966
- Clay Regazzoni – 1970, 1975
- Jody Scheckter – 1979
- Gerhard Berger – 1988
- Michael Schumacher – 1996, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006
- Rubens Barrichello – 2002, 2004
- Fernando Alonso – 2010
- Charles Leclerc – 2019