Ferrari's New Engine Shines in Monza FP2

Monza belongs to the brave. On Friday, it also belonged to a familiar cast of giants wrestling with very different storylines.

At Mercedes, Kimi Antonelli arrived as the first Italian in more than 70 years to lead the Formula 1 world championship heading into his home grand prix. He did so carrying a grid penalty that could yet tilt the title fight. On the other side of the garage, George Russell saw the gap and went straight for it.

Ferrari, meanwhile, rolled into its cathedral with a new engine, a restless crowd and the faint but still flickering idea that this season might yet become something more than a valiant chase.

By the end of FP2, the early winners and losers were already emerging.

Winner: Ferrari’s new engine (2nd & 5th)

Ferrari’s second ADUO upgrade has been the headline act of the weekend build-up, and on Friday it finally hit the stage.

Charles Leclerc pushed it to second in FP2, just 0.120s shy of Russell’s benchmark, and crucially looked strong over the long runs as well. On paper, that’s impressive. In context, it’s even better: Leclerc set that time on soft Pirellis while the Mercedes pair – and the rapid Red Bull of Liam Lawson – ran the harder compound.

This is still only Friday. Times are distorted by programmes, fuel loads and tyre choices. But Monza is brutal on engines. It exposes any power deficit in a way few other tracks can. Ferrari came here not expecting miracles, only hoping this upgrade would trim the gap rather than erase it.

So far, that’s exactly what it seems to have done.

Both Leclerc and his team-mate are running the updated power unit, and the car no longer looks helpless on the straights. For a team that has spent years watching others blast past on this circuit’s long drags, that alone is enough to stir the Tifosi.

It isn’t a title-winning transformation. It is, though, the kind of step that keeps those outside hopes alive.

Loser: Honda’s latest engine (19th & 22nd)

If Ferrari’s upgrade offered encouragement, Honda’s latest step landed with a thud.

Fernando Alonso had said on Thursday that Monza would be a truer test of Honda’s progress than Zandvoort, where the engine made its debut. He was right. Just not in the way he’d have wanted.

On a track where power is king, Honda was always going to be under the microscope. Trackside general manager and chief engineer Shintaro Orihara had already urged realism, warning that this would be “challenging for [the] power unit side”.

He wasn’t bluffing.

Alonso and Lance Stroll ended up near the bottom of the order in FP2, sandwiching the Cadillacs and sitting more than a second per lap off the next-slowest car once Esteban Ocon’s compromised Haas time is discounted.

This is the sort of circuit where any weakness in deployment, peak power or drag efficiency is brutally exposed. On Friday, Honda, Aston Martin and their drivers found themselves exactly where they didn’t want to be: stuck at the wrong end of the timesheets with nowhere to hide.

Winner: George Russell (1st)

On Thursday, Russell sounded cautious. No declarations, no chest-beating.

“I don't know if we can say we're favourites this weekend,” he said. “But we probably have a greater opportunity than we've had in the last two races where it's been less about the power unit and more about the chassis.

“It's so close right now, that last tenth in qualifying can be the difference of a couple of positions, which can change the podium. Right now, I don't know who is going to be the team to beat.”

Twenty-four hours later, he looked like exactly that.

Russell turned a three-tenth deficit to Ferrari from FP1 into a 0.120s advantage over Leclerc in FP2, planting Mercedes on top at a circuit that should naturally suit its low-drag strengths. On a day when Antonelli’s grid penalty loomed large over the title picture, Russell quietly did the most important thing he could: he put himself in control of his own weekend.

Mercedes’ engine is ageing. Russell knows that. He also knows he will likely get some strategic help from Antonelli in Q3, with the Italian’s race compromised by that penalty. Slipstreams, track position, and a car that comes alive on power tracks – the ingredients are there.

Whether Ferrari’s ADUO 2 upgrade still has more to show remains to be seen. For now, Russell has landed the first blow.

Loser: Red Bull (9th & 12th)

Red Bull came into the post-Zandvoort stretch with a fresh Max Verstappen deal and plenty of talk about a shared future. The reality of the present, though, looks far less rosy.

This is not a title-chasing year for team or driver. Everyone inside that garage knows it. The standout results they have salvaged so far have needed flashes of Verstappen’s old sorcery just to drag the car into contention.

Since the new contract was announced, the on-track picture has only grown murkier. Sixth in the sprint in the Netherlands. A crash in the Dutch Grand Prix. Then came Monza FP2 and a laundry list of complaints: no downforce, a forced wing change, no grip in the slow corners, braking issues, and a car that Verstappen described as “jumping” on the front axle.

Ninth and 12th on Friday told its own story.

On a track where Red Bull once defined the standard, it now looks like a team trying to keep its head above the midfield. If Verstappen is to drag this car forward again, it may take one of his more extreme party tricks just to get it into the fight.

Winner: Ollie Bearman (8th)

Haas arrived with what it called its biggest upgrade of 2026. Only one driver got the full package. Ollie Bearman made it count.

Armed with the new bodywork and the latest Ferrari engine – which Ocon does not yet have – Bearman hustled his car to eighth in FP2, just 0.8s off Russell’s pace and a mere 0.02s behind Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad.

“It’s definitely been our best Friday since probably March or that time of year,” Bearman said. A team in need of a lift suddenly had one.

The new package has given him more downforce through the corners and, just as importantly, more confidence to lean on the car. He did temper his excitement by pointing out that Saturday will revolve around slipstreams and track position, and admitted the car is a bit more draggy than some rivals.

But when you’ve gone six grands prix without a point, a “bit more draggy” is a small price to pay for a “huge step up”.

Haas head of car engineering Hoagy Nidd didn’t downplay it either: “It's a huge upgrade. We've updated all of the chassis. It's all of the bodywork rearwards of the cockpit pretty much.”

For a midfield team trying to claw its way back into relevance, Friday at Monza felt like a genuine turning point.

Loser: Esteban Ocon (18th)

The contrast within Haas could hardly have been sharper.

Ocon has the new bodywork but not the new Ferrari engine, caught out by a quirk of F1’s technical regulations around additional engine homologation steps. On the stopwatch, the price looked heavy: he ended FP2 more than a second adrift of Bearman.

Nidd moved quickly to cool any suggestion that the power unit alone explained the gap, stressing that Ocon “perhaps wasn't given the best opportunity to get up there” and that the engine difference doesn’t fully account for the disparity.

Traffic didn’t help either. Monza’s old trope of ruined push laps struck again, with Ocon finding his best efforts compromised in the chaos of slipstream hunting.

Even so, the numbers are what they are. On a day when Haas finally saw light at the end of a long tunnel, Ocon found himself stuck in the shadows, staring at the timing screens and wondering how quickly his side of the garage can close that gap before it really starts to matter.