Round 11, Sunday, September 6th

World Championship leader Nelson Piquet returned to Monza sharing the history books with Juan Manuel Fangio, Ronnie Peterson and Stirling Moss for having won the Italian Grand Prix three times. Taking pole position in practice, he and the Canon Williams Honda were ideally placed to make it four Italian wins, but he did elect to try the active-suspension Williams for the first time in this event, whilst his teammate Nigel Mansell was using the well-tried and trusted conventional suspension. Overall, there was plenty of opposition, and the quarter million crowd was fervently behind their beloved Ferraris in the hands of Michele Alboreto and Gerhard Berger, whilst Ayrton Senna (Camel Lotus Honda) was second in the World Championship and could be expected to go well.

This video gets into the unique atmosphere of the Monza Autodrome, with its very fast sweeps and straights. Names like the Curva Grande and the Lesmo Bends are known to just about every motor sports enthusiast and the cameras capture the really rapid action as well as the vital pit-stops. But Piquet was the man to watch. Champion in 1981 and 1983, he was competing in his 136th Grand Prix, of which he had up to this point won nineteen. He wouldn't let his intended depature from the Williams team interfere in any way with his thoroughly professional approach.