Monza Full Lap Guide for F1 25: Chicanes, Kerbs, Exits

Monza rewards a very specific kind of driver: one who can stop the car hard in a straight line, get it turned in the space of a car's length, and then be patient enough not to ruin the exit. The lap is eleven corners and roughly 80% full throttle, but almost all of the time you lose is created in four braking zones and paid for over the next fifteen seconds of straight. In F1 25, with the low-drag configuration everyone runs here, the car is quicker down the straights and considerably less willing to stop and rotate. That trade is the whole lap.

Why Monza magnifies your mistakes

Every corner at Monza except the Lesmos leads onto a long straight. That means an exit error does not cost a tenth at the exit marker, it compounds all the way to the next braking zone. Being 5 km/h slow leaving Ascari is still costing you at the Parabolica braking board eleven seconds later.

The flip side is that entry mistakes are cheap to make and expensive to notice. Overshooting the Rettifilo by half a car length feels heroic and then quietly costs you two tenths, because you had to wait for the car to rotate before you could get back to power. Monza punishes greed on entry more than almost any circuit on the calendar.

The lap, corner by corner

Treat every number below as a starting reference, not gospel. Braking distances move with fuel load, tyre compound and slipstream. What matters is having a fixed reference and adjusting from it deliberately rather than guessing lap to lap.

Turns 1-2: Variante del Rettifilo

You arrive here in the region of 340 km/h with DRS open. The 100 metre board is the marker most quick drivers work around, and it is genuinely close to the limit. Start from 150 and walk it in.

The mistake most people make is braking late and releasing late too. Rettifilo is a straight-line stop into a very tight left-right. Hit the pedal hard, take the majority of the load off before you begin turning, and use only a small amount of trail brake to settle the nose. Second gear, apex speed somewhere around 90-100 km/h.

Do not attack the entry kerb. Monza chicane kerbs are tall and sharp, and on low downforce the car has little vertical margin to absorb them. Clip the left kerb at the first apex, get the car straight, then use the right-hand exit kerb properly. That is the one that actually buys time, because it opens the exit line onto the run to Curva Grande. Watch the raised sausage on the far side: a wheel over it will pitch the car and cost you the corner.

Turns 4-5: Variante della Roggia

The fastest approach on the lap, and the easiest place to lose the rear. Around 330 km/h on entry after Curva Grande, braking somewhere near the 100 metre board, down to second.

Roggia is a left-right, so the load transfer works against you. You brake, turn left, and the car is already unsettled when you have to flick it right. Two rules make the corner work.

1. Finish your downshifts before you commit to the left-hand entry. Chasing a downshift mid-rotation on low downforce is how you find the inside wall.
2. Sacrifice a little entry speed for a straighter, earlier exit line. The right-hand exit kerb is usable, so ride it rather than jump it, and unwind the wheel sooner for the drag to Lesmo 1.

Turns 6-7: The Lesmos

Lesmo 1 is a fourth-gear right that tightens on entry. Lesmo 2 is a fourth-gear right that opens on exit. They ask for opposite things.

For Lesmo 1, brake earlier than instinct suggests and use a genuine trail into the apex. This is the one corner where sustained brake pressure through the turn genuinely helps you rotate. The apex is late. Clip it early and you will run wide onto the exit kerb and ruin the entry to Lesmo 2.

Lesmo 2 is the more valuable of the pair because it feeds the run to Ascari. Be honest about your apex: the temptation is to carry too much speed in, understeer wide, then be forced to lift while unwinding. Get the car pointed slightly earlier, reach full throttle before the apex, and let it drift out to the exit kerb naturally. A tenth given up on entry to Lesmo 2 comes back as three tenths by the Ascari board.

Turns 8-10: Variante Ascari

The corner that separates lap times at Monza. A quick left, a right, then a left onto the back straight, linked in the 200-240 km/h band depending on how well you join them.

Approach at roughly 330 km/h and brake in a straight line, short and firm, down to fourth. The first left sets up everything that follows. Too much speed there and the second and third elements collapse into a series of corrections. Think of Ascari as one corner with three apexes, not three corners.

Kerb use matters more here than anywhere else on the lap. All three apex kerbs are usable, but the third, the left that launches you onto the straight, is the one to respect. Riding it flat is fine. Landing on it while still carrying steering lock on low downforce will step the rear out at 200 km/h. Get the car straight, then take the kerb.

Turn 11: Parabolica

A single long right, entered around 340 km/h, that lasts long enough for a mistake to feel like an eternity. Brake in a straight line, down to fourth, and pick a deliberately early, gentle apex.

The instinct is to get on power the moment you can see the exit. Resist it. Parabolica is a progressive throttle corner: squeeze in, let the car run out towards the exit kerb, and only take full throttle once the wheel is nearly straight. Wheelspin here is not just slow through the corner, it costs you the whole start-finish straight and your DRS effectiveness into Turn 1.

Kerbs: one simple rule at Monza

Flat kerbs are surface, sausage kerbs are obstacles. Use the flat apex and exit kerbs wherever you find them: Rettifilo exit, Roggia exit, Lesmo 2 exit, all three at Ascari, Parabolica exit. Stay off the raised sections at the chicane exits unless the car is already straight. And remember F1 25 polices track limits with a three-strike system: a lap that only works because you are two wheels beyond the white line is not one you can repeat in a race.

Where the time actually hides

If you are within a second of a reference lap, the deficit is almost never spread evenly. Overlay against a faster lap and check four things in order.

1. Minimum speed at Rettifilo and Roggia. If yours is lower, you are over-slowing on entry, not braking too early.
2. Time from apex to full throttle at Lesmo 2 and Ascari. Every tenth of hesitation there becomes several tenths by the next braking board.
3. Speed trap at the end of each straight. This is your exit report card, and it is more honest than any corner-speed number.
4. Steering angle at the exit of Parabolica. If you are still correcting past the exit kerb, your throttle application was too early rather than too aggressive.

That comparison is hard to run while you are also driving. P1 (https://takep1.com) is an AI race engineer that reads your telemetry live and coaches the exact corners and braking points costing you time, so you get the diagnosis on the next lap instead of after the session.

A practice plan that works

Give yourself twenty laps. First five: brake ten metres early at every chicane and focus purely on getting to full throttle as soon as possible. Learn what a clean exit feels like before you chase entry speed. Next ten: walk each braking point in five metres at a time, one corner per run, keeping that exit discipline. Last five: put it together and check whether the speed trap numbers moved.

Most drivers arrive at Monza and immediately start braking later. The quick ones arrive and start getting on the throttle earlier. It is a short lap with few corners, and nowhere to hide a bad exit.