Ferrari Goes All Out at Monza — And the Biggest Change Is Under the Car

A Home Race Ferrari Has Been Building Towards

The credit for this one belongs to @f1wow, who pulled the thread together from The Race's technical reporting by Rosario Giuliana, published on August 31. The headline claim is simple enough: Ferrari is going all out to win at Monza, and it is doing so with a circuit-specific floor and the new ADUO engine.

That fits a plan the Scuderia has been signalling since mid-season. We covered the engine half of it in August, when Italian outlet AutoRacer put a number on the step — "at least 15 horsepower" from a redesigned turbo, a revised combustion engine and a new Shell fuel blend. The aerodynamic half is what The Race has now filled in, and it is more interesting than a wing swap.

The starting point is the floor Ferrari introduced at Zandvoort, which remains the development baseline for the rest of the season. Rather than throw it away for Monza, Ferrari is adapting it — specifically, reverting the floor-board area to the single vertical element the SF-26 ran in Austria and at Silverstone, in place of the three-element arrangement that has been on the car more recently. Fewer elements, less surface, less drag down the long straights.

The Package, Part by Part

Here is what changes on the SF-26 between the Dutch Grand Prix and the Italian Grand Prix, and the reasoning behind each decision.

Read down that table and the shape of it is unusual. Four of the five entries are subtractions or non-changes. The one genuinely new part is buried under the car where no camera will ever see it.

Why Nobody Brings a "Monza Wing" Any More

This is the part worth understanding, because it is not a Ferrari story so much as a 2026 story. Under the old regulations, Monza forced a brutal compromise: teams built a special, almost flat rear wing that traded away cornering downforce for a fortnight in exchange for top speed. It was the most distinctive aero package of the year.

The 2026 rules changed the maths. With movable front and rear wings, cars flip into a low-drag straight-line mode in designated zones and back to full downforce for the corners — and as The Race notes, active aero and extensive use of straight-line mode make the Monza compromise "less severe than it has historically been." If the wing already flattens itself on the straights, the case for a wing that is permanently flat largely evaporates. Ferrari's rear-wing work amounts to removing the hanger flaps it bolted on for Hungary, and there is, in The Race's words, "not a completely bespoke 'Monza-spec' rear wing."

So where does the remaining lap time hide? In everything that cannot move. Bodywork, floor and diffuser keep generating drag whether straight-line mode is engaged or not. Under these rules the fastest car at Monza is not the one carrying the least downforce — it is the one producing its downforce with the least resistance. That is exactly why Ferrari spent its Monza development budget on a floor board rather than a rear wing, and it is a useful lens for the rest of the season. (If you are new to the 2026 package, our guide to the new regulations walks through active aero and energy management in full.)

ADUO 2: Ferrari's Last Engine Card of 2026

ADUO stands for Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities — the mechanism that lets manufacturers who are measurably down on power spend extra in-season development to catch up. It is an allowance, not an engine name. Ferrari's roughly 4% deficit in the FIA's power ranking earned it two of them for 2026: one spent in Austria, worth a modest 5–8bhp, and this one.

Choosing Monza for the second is not sentiment. It is the most power-sensitive circuit on the calendar, the venue where a straight-line deficit is most visible and where recovering it pays the largest dividend. Ferrari has a new ICE specification ready and has been weighing whether to align it with a fourth internal combustion engine and fourth turbocharger for both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc — a decision that was still open when The Race published on August 31.

Temper the expectations slightly. Leclerc, who has run the revised engine and floor package in the simulator, did not emerge from it expecting a transformation, and Ferrari's own Zandvoort aero package was understood to be worth in the region of 0.15s per lap. This is incremental catch-up, delivered at the track where increments show up biggest — the same philosophy behind the broader Ferrari 2026 upgrade roadmap.

The Opening: Antonelli Starts From the Back

Ferrari's timing has been handed a gift. Championship leader Kimi Antonelli — an Italian, at his home race, in front of a grandstand that would happily adopt him — will start the Italian Grand Prix from the back of the grid after taking his fifth Mercedes power unit of the season, a penalty Toto Wolff confirmed ahead of the weekend. "So with Kimi we are taking the full thing," Wolff said, meaning every major power-unit component.

Mercedes chose Monza deliberately. "Monza is an energy-starved circuit with four overtaking zones," trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin told Sky Sports. "A driver cannot defend all of them, so a faster car should be able to make progress relatively straightforwardly." He added the strategic logic plainly: "We also lead both championships, so there is logic in taking the pain now rather than adding pressure if the margins tighten later in the season."

Antonelli's own view, given to Motorsport.com, was rather more direct: "Given that I'm starting last, it's going to be full attack." Which sets up the weekend neatly — the championship leader carving forward through a circuit designed for overtaking, while the home team tries to convert a rare clear run at the front into its third win of 2026.

The Standings, and What to Watch

The urgency is in the points. After Round 12 at Zandvoort, Mercedes leads the constructors' championship on 425 points to Ferrari's 338 — an 87-point gap with eleven rounds remaining. In the drivers' table, Antonelli's 242 points sit 59 clear of a remarkable tie for second: George Russell and Lewis Hamilton are level on 183, with Russell ahead on countback (two wins to one). Leclerc is fifth on 155.

Two things will tell the story by Saturday evening. The first is the speed traps: if ADUO 2 is fitted and delivering, Ferrari's terminal velocity down the main straight is where it shows up first, with no ambiguity. The second is the middle sector — because if the single-element floor has genuinely cut drag without costing load, Ferrari should hold its cornering speed through Lesmo and Ascari while gaining everywhere else. Lose time there and the trade was too aggressive.

The 2026 Italian Grand Prix runs at Monza on Sunday, September 6. Live timing, the countdown and results as they land are on our Race Hub; the self-updating table is on the championship standings page, and the full run-in is on the 2026 race calendar. Ferrari has spent all season saying the recovery would be incremental. At Monza, in front of the Tifosi, the increments finally arrive together.