Ferrari’s Monza engine upgrade: promise, pressure, and the first verdict

Ferrari’s second power-unit upgrade of the season arrived at Monza carrying more weight than a normal development step ever could. At the Italian Grand Prix, any technical change is judged not only on lap time but on symbolism, because Ferrari’s home race tends to magnify every gain, every limitation and every split-second difference against the opposition. The early read from the team and its drivers is that the upgrade has helped, but it has not yet produced a verdict strong enough to declare Monza a Ferrari takeover.

The factual starting point is straightforward: Ferrari introduced its second engine upgrade of the 2026 season at Monza under the permitted ADUO framework. That alone made the weekend an important test of both the team’s development work and its ability to turn that work into a competitive edge on a circuit where top speed matters. The team’s early tone, as reported by The Race, was upbeat enough to suggest the new package is doing something meaningful. But the key word is “something” rather than “everything”. There is evidence of progress, not proof of dominance.

That nuance matters because Ferrari’s Friday started strongly enough to feed optimism. In first practice, Charles Leclerc was fastest for Ferrari, which is exactly the kind of headline the home crowd wants to see on the opening day. It is not, however, enough on its own to establish that the upgrade has changed Ferrari’s Monza prospects in a fundamental way. FP1 can flatter cars that are well suited to a lighter fuel run or a less representative programme, so the bigger question was always going to be whether Ferrari could carry that pace into a more meaningful comparison.

Second practice delivered that comparison, and it made the picture harder to read. George Russell topped FP2 for Mercedes, ahead of Leclerc and Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli, after a mid-session shootout among the front-running cars. That matters because FP2 is generally the session that offers the most useful glimpse of qualifying-style performance before teams turn attention to race preparation. If Ferrari’s upgrade were clearly transformative, the gap would have been easier to frame. Instead, Mercedes reasserted itself at the top and kept the debate alive about who really has the upper hand at Monza.