Ferrari show up at Monza still rubbing at the bruise from Zandvoort. That weekend was messy. Nothing stuck. But Monza? Always different. The tifosi make it different.
And this year, there’s something else swirling in the background. Not points. Not standings. Colours. Memories.
Monday morning. Social media clip. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in team kit that wasn’t scarlet. Blue and white. Odd, at first glance. Then the cutaway to the old 312T. Lauda’s car. The one that sealed the title fifty years ago.
The tifosi didn’t need subtitles. They knew what was being teased.
Lauda’s 1975 breakthrough
September 1975. Ferrari hadn’t had a world champion since John Surtees back in ’64. That’s a long gap when you’re Ferrari.
Lauda came into Monza knowing exactly what he needed. Not a win. Just a podium. Third would do. And that’s what he dragged across the line. Regazzoni actually won the race, but Lauda walked away with the crown. First of three. Ferrari finally champions again.
That machine, the 312T, was a piece of work. Flat-12 engine that shook the trees. A transverse gearbox slotted in tight, fixing balance issues that had haunted Ferrari before. It looked straightforward but it became one of the most effective designs F1 had ever seen. That season wasn’t only Lauda’s coming of age. It was Ferrari hitting reset.
Why blue matters
Red is Ferrari. Always has been. But blue? It sneaks back in at the strangest moments.
Take Alberto Ascari. First Ferrari F1 world champion. He wore light blue, Azzurro La Plata on his jersey and helmet. Called it lucky. Back-to-back titles in 1952 and 1953 made sure it became part of Ferrari lore.
Skip ahead. The seventies. Lauda and Regazzoni in darker blue. Azzurro Dino. You had scarlet cars and blue overalls. Looked mismatched. Became iconic.
And then the wild detour in 1964. Ferrari fell out with the Italian federation. So the cars ran under North American Racing Team. Blue and white paint. U.S. national colours. Surtees still took the championship like that. A Ferrari title that wasn’t won in red. Fans still talk about it.
Even Argentina had a thread in it. National blue-and-yellow tied into Ferrari’s early racing story. And more recently, blue popping up again when the brand marked seventy years in the North American market.
The colour has weight. It always did.
Monza and the one-offs
Monza has turned into Ferrari’s stage for experiments. Different every year, but there’s always something to point at.
2022 – Bright yellow accents all over the SF-75. The tifosi split over it. Too loud for some. But it marked the 75th anniversary. That was the point.
2023 – Ferrari had just gone back to Le Mans and won. At Monza they added little flourishes, details nodding to that endurance triumph. Easy to miss if you weren’t looking closely. But it meant plenty to those who knew.
2024 – No livery change at all. The SF-24 stayed scarlet. But the drivers didn’t. Leclerc and Sainz in black overalls, black helmets. A tribute to carbon fibre, the material that changed the sport. Subtle, almost too subtle, but it stuck.
And earlier this season in Miami. Ferrari kept the red but splashed in Azzurro La Plata across the engine cover and on the Front wing. Blue and white accents, courtesy of Hewlett Packard. Some loved it, some thought it odd. Either way, it got people talking.
Stack all that together. Yellow, Le Mans, black kit, Miami blue. You can see where Monza 2025 is heading.
Blue today
It’s not just nostalgia. Blue has been folded into Ferrari’s present.
HP brought it into the kit. Into the branding. Into the car. In the tech world, blue signals progress. Ferrari leaned into that.
And the Miami trial showed it wasn’t a mistake. The tifosi accepted it. Collectors of road cars jumped at it too. Special editions painted in Azzurro shades stand out against a sea of red. Still Ferrari, but a different flavour.
Hamilton and Lauda
For Hamilton, Monza is heavier than usual. His Ferrari debut hasn’t landed yet. Zandvoort ended in the wall. Other Sundays unravelled with errors, bad timing, or just a lack of rhythm.
And this is where Lauda’s absence is loud.
He wasn’t just the man who told Hamilton to leave McLaren in 2012. Though that alone changed the shape of modern F1. Without Lauda pushing, Hamilton might never have joined Mercedes. Might never have won those six titles with them.
But Lauda stayed close after that. He wasn’t just an advisor. He was a confidant. The one voice Hamilton trusted when everything else turned into noise.
Because Lauda had lived it. Champion at Ferrari. Then McLaren. The Nürburgring in 1976. A fire that nearly killed him. Burns to his face. Lungs wrecked. Doctors thought he was finished. Six weeks later, he climbed back in. Still bandaged. Still scarred. And still racing James Hunt.
That’s why Hamilton listened. Lauda could be blunt, sometimes brutal, but always steady. He cut through the storm because he’d stood in it himself.
Since Lauda’s death in 2019, Hamilton has often looked more alone. Still fast. Still breaking records. But without the compass. No one to strip things back to what matters.
Now he walks into Monza. Ferrari colours on his chest. A weekend carrying Lauda’s name. Maybe even a car dressed in Lauda’s colours.
Oh, how Lewis could do with Lauda right now in his corner.
The tifosi’s expectation
Ferrari haven’t confirmed a thing. No renders. No glossy press releases. Just hints.
Blue team kit. Archive reels of the 312T. Anniversary posts dripping with nostalgia.
That’s enough. The tifosi will pack Monza already convinced they’ll see something different. A car tied to Lauda’s ’75 crown. White flashes maybe. Metallic edges. Something that links the SF-25 back to the 312T.
I’m thinking blue team kit and a Lauda tribute livery. The tifosi will be thinking the same.
The stands will be scarlet, they always are. But the colour people talk about on Monday might be blue.
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