Written by Cameron Gale, Edited by Ishani Aziz
One of the oldest races on the World Endurance Championship calendar is due to take place on the 10th July 2022 with the long awaited return of Peugeot. The “Monza Six Hours”. Originally known as the “1000 kilometres of Monza”, the cathedral of speed has held host to many World Endurance Championships and European Le Mans Series races.
It was first held in 1949 when the Italian Bruno Sterzi won it in a Ferrari 166 S and he became part of the history books forever. However things soon changed as by 1954 we had the first British driver: enter Mike Hawthorn. In 1976 it became part of the World Sportscar Championship Calendar but that only lasted for two years as the championship was cancelled in 1978 so it had to be reconfigured to allow it to be eligible for the European Sportscar Championship.
In 1995 and 1996 it became part of the global GT series reserved for GT cars with the four hour format. In 2004 it resumed as part of the European Le Mans series after that the rest is history.
Monza has 11 corners, 7 left and 4 right. The best overtaking spots are into Variante Retifillo, Variante Della Roggio and into Ascari. Sometimes you can overtake into Parabolica but this is very risky and can end in heartbreak for the driver and team. The back straight going down to Ascari can also prove to be an overtaking spot because of the powerful slipstream but most of the time the move is finished off on the brakes into Ascari.
Last time the World Endurance championship came to Monza the number 7 car driven by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez won with Alpines number 36 car just over one minute behind. It was an impressive drive by Phil Hanson, Fabio Scherer and Filipe Albuquerque who claimed the LMP2 class win. LMP2 also had some great battles as Team WRT managed to get an astonishing 2nd place after an earlier battle with Racing Team Nederland meant they had to repair some damage. In GTE pro it was a battle for the ages between the number 91 Porsche driven by Kevin Estre and Neil Jami and the number 51 Ferrari driven by James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi but the number 91 Porsche was the one who came out on top. In GTE Am it was a similar story but Ferrari came out on top with Aston Martin following close behind.