Lombardy — An Observation For Every Hour I Spent At F1 Monza That Has Nothing To Do With Racecar Driving

I’ve always been weak for sports dramas; my favorite movies are those oddly specific, saccharinely inspirational, athletic cliches where the underdog of a niche sport achieves her dream accompanied by a healthy dose of self-growth and an unrealistic romantic interest. (See: Stick It, The Cutting Edge, Blue Crush). 

So when my boyfriend, Ian, dragged me to a weekend of Formula One, I was far more interested in the people, drama, and context revealed via the race, rather than the actual driving. How could I not be excited? In the spirit of the aforementioned inspirational sports dramas, this race was being filmed! For a television show! A show with lots of drama and attractive men, big egos and even bigger stakes when coupled with COVID-19 and the fact that this is Italy! F1 Monza was like my movies coming to life, albeit without intense music and a curated edit to pinpoint exactly where I should be looking.

But looking I did, because while I know nothing about racecar driving, I couldn’t help but admire the fanfare. Italians are nothing if not passionate, and this event gave them the excuse to be un-apologetically themselves: loud, intense. Un-apologetic.

Day one was the qualifying race, in which the men raced to determine their starting position (which still confuses me because how do they determine their starting position for this starting position race? Ian informed me that they do a race before this race, which again confused me because how do they determine their starting position for that? He said it was a timed race, I said that took away from the shock of the final race, he said each race is different… and I was already too bored to dwell on it further). Day two was the actual race. 

Two days of racing is a long time and let’s be honest; watching cars drive around a track can only be interesting for so many laps. When the excitement of speed fades, it’s all about the in-between moments.

So after these two very full, very hot days in the Monza stands, I’ve compiled a list of observations from the race that have absolutely nothing to do with the sport itself and everything to do with my entertainment.

1: The level of fanaticism for Charles Leclerc — and Ferrari, for that matter — is like a sixth-grade girl reacting to Harry Styles. Excessive, caricatured, opinionated, and highly, highly visible. We walk into the stadium to see signs everywhere, posters with Leclerc’s face on them, crowds drenched in red, flags worn as dresses, children in head-to-toe Ferrari gear: earphones, socks, masks. It’s funny to see the Italians rally behind a car with the same passion they show for their soccer teams, certain neighborhoods, pizzerias. It’s our first day and our seats are across from Ferrari’s pit crew. The stands beside us look like this:

2. A boy about fifteen sits across from us, by himself, but happily so. He is silent, deliberately watching the race. About an hour into the Porsche practice, a man in his fifties walks up the stands, waving around his ticket. “What seat are you?” he asks me in Italian. I tell him, he shrugs, asks where Ian and I are from, takes the seat in front of us. As soon as he sits, the fifteen-year-old across the way starts yelling, wagging his fingers at the man. The two erupt in a back-and-forth too fast for me to understand, beyond the fact that it ultimately ends in laughter, neither man moving, both conversing over rows of chairs, making conversation difficult when it doesn’t need to be. 

A few hours later, the man gets a beer and while he’s gone, the fifteen-year-old boy moves a rows behind us. The man returns and after a few sips of beer, turns around, holding up his phone. His camera app is already opened with the front-facing camera prepped.

“Can I have your hat?” he asks Ian, whose hat says “US Open 2021.” He’d gone to the tennis tournament a few weeks back (which, if you ask me, seems even more boring than racecar driving).

Ian obliges, handing over the hat, and the man grins. He promptly puts it on and takes a selfie: the only picture I’ve seen him take of the race all day. “This is for my wife,” he says. “America!” 

As he hands the hat back, he starts shouting, again, to the fifteen-year old boy. He’s speaking Italian so some of it gets lost, but he says something like “I got the picture!” to which the boy grins, flashing a thumbs-up. 

Moments later, the two have moved seats once more, both sitting together a few rows to our right. They are, apparently, father and son. 

3. The announcer walks up and down the bleachers over and over again. He is narrating the race, only the race hasn't started yet so keeps repeating that today is a “day of surprises.” He stops mid-conversation to offer directions to a group of people looking for their seat. He stops again mid-narration to let a small child speak into the microphone. When he asks who in the stands is from out of the country, Ian and I look at each other before wordlessly agreeing not to say a word. I half-expect the man who borrowed Ian’s hat to call us out for our deceit. 

4. Because this is Italy, easy tasks have to be made complicated, and getting lunch is the perfect opportunity to set up those complications. (I say this in good fun, but know that I am dead serious. Over the past few years, my biggest takeaway from being here is that the Italians unnecessarily complicate things — and truly do not care for the wasted efficiency.) 

Case in point: there are food vendors stationed all around the stadium — tons of stands with everything from fried meatballs with mayonnaise (more on that below) to the classic hamburger to Heineken kegs larger than the studio apartment I rented in Paris. This is great, I thought. Socially-distanced stands, an array of options available, a lack of lines at each joint. Good job F1.

Ah, not so fast. Because while Monza is the temple of speed, the Italians are the antithesis of speed and so, in order to get lunch, beer, or even a bottle of water, you have to pay with tokens, the Italian word for which is fische. Perhaps the Italians wanted to make buying food similar to an arcade game where you must first calculate how much your lunch will cost by looking at the boards at each vendor you desire to visit, and then you must purchase tokens from a token booth. One token is worth €1.50.

The problem is that in order to acquire said tokens, you must first wait in another line at a token booth. Of those token booths, three are in our area, one of which is closed. The two that are open each have one person working, a person who is counting out tokens by hand. 

I want a bottle of water, which costs €1.50: one token. There is no line at the water stand, I have €1.50 in my pocket, but they won’t let me pay. I go to the token line, a line that is 20-people deep and takes approximately 30 minutes to get through. 

Why do they do this, you may wonder? Because it’s Italy, and just when you think something is going to be easy, they tell you not so fast. 

5. Meatballs are one of my all-time favorite foods, but I’ve never had them like this. Here, they are served like french fries in a little checkered dish with a trio of toppings: mayonnaise, barbecue sauce, and ketchup — none of which is particularly bad, none of which is life-changing. I am both intrigued and full after my meatball lunch. If only American baseball games would offer similar options…

6. Things F1 said we couldn’t bring inside the stadium: water bottles (of any sort), chargers, lids to anything, food, large electronics, power ports. Things I saw others bring into the F1 stadium: water bottles (of all sorts), chargers, lids to all sorts of things, food, large electronics, power ports.

7. On the second day, a family of three — a mom, a dad, and a boy of about ten — takes the seats beside us, plopping down a bag larger than the suitcase I brought to Italy in the first place. In this bag, they pull out the following items: five plain white t-shirts, a bathing suit, two packs of cigarettes (which the boy passes to his mother), playing cards, a stack of sandwiches, three blankets, and some hats. They set up shop, lining out these items, and then the dad — who looks like someone who once belonged to a fraternity and believes he still does — takes off his shirt. Rather than put on one of the many other outfits his wife has procured, he remains half-naked, jostling up and down the bleachers. A moment later, a woman joins the family. She trips over the stairs, laughing as she falls. It’s the man’s sister, apparently, and the woman with the bag hands her one of the shirts. She promptly changes her outfit.

Eventually, the family relocates to the bleachers behind us, and the next time I look back, they are all playing cards. The wife is wearing the bathing suit (?), the man is drinking a beer, and they are all happily eating sandwiches. 

8. A man in a red wig and all-red ensemble charges through the bleachers with an Italian flag the width of a king-sized mattress. He thrusts the flag over the crowd. The family from earlier — the woman in her bathing suit, the sometimes shirtless, sometimes clothed dad — hoists the flag up and start cheering. Everyone erupts into a song I don’t know. As the man in the wig leaves, carrying his flag to the next section of bleachers, he screams “NO Lewis Hamilton.” Again, everyone cheers.

9. Before the race, the drivers pile into the back of a truck and do a drive-by, during which they wave to the adoring crowd. It’s a sobering reminder that there are people inside those cars that seem to me remote-controlled, operated by joysticks rather than real life bodies. They look incredibly small, like little dolls, and while the crowd erupts in cheers, I can’t help but think of that scene in the Hunger Games where each district parades around its representatives cloaked in district-tangential gear. Ferrari’s two drivers don their red uniforms ála Katniss and Peeta in their decorated float. Leclerc and the other guy whose name I forget because Italy cares less about him and he’s not quite as attractive, are both, quite literally, putting their lives on the line for the sake of spectacle.

10. Re: above, spectacle of danger, possibility of death, etc. The DJ keeps alternating between “I Will Survive” and “Staying Alive.”

11. We are sitting in front of three EMTs who look to be in their 70/80s and a firefighter. They are wearing safety suits but smoking cigarettes, eating sandwiches, and paying no attention to safety. Before the drivers take to the track, the men unravel strips of red, white, and green fabric and walk to the center of the strip. Holding up pieces of fabric, they get in the formation of the Italian flag, but are backwards at first and must quickly adjust. The firefighter takes the picture: a selfie, before they return to their perch. When there is an accident later on in the race, the four men haphazardly wave the signs for the safety car, cigarettes in the wing, flag unraveled on the ground.

12. Daniel Riccardo wins the race, but what’s interesting about that isn’t his speed but how the Italians root for him — and claim his victory as their own. Riccardo races for another team and is from another country, but his parents are apparently Italian, so, therefore, Riccardo is one of them. The Italians react accordingly, screaming his name each time he rounds the bend. This reminds me of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, where the father claims anything that could be remotely affiliated with Greece, however many generations ago, however tangential, as irrefutably Greek.

And, best of all, they cheer for “Danielle Richardo” instead of “Daniel Riccardo,” following their own grammatical rules rather than adapting to the ones that reflect his actual name.

“Danielle Ricchardo vince!” even the announcer screams. I wonder if this is the surprise he mentioned yesterday.