The famous circuit stages the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday but it needs a new deal with Formula One’s owners to keep going

There are few Formula One circuits that stir the heart quite like Monza, where the sense of history and passion for the sport is palpable. There are fewer still where you can reach out and touch the fabric on which this tradition has been built. The past is still very much in evidence but at this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, for Ferrari and for Monza, the future is very much the most immediate concern.

Walk the grounds inside the track and its grand history is clear. It is being maintained and developed as a sort of automotive listed building. Here is the swathe of banking from the 1950s and inside it one of the original cobbled turns from its incarnation in 1922. They sit amid trees and bushes, majestic reminders of just how long the Parco di Monza has gloried in motor racing.

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For Ferrari, the honour in winning here matters more than anywhere. They are favourites to do so on Sunday with Sebastian Vettel, who may well be in the process of writing his name alongside Ferrari’s greats.

The Scuderia have not won at Monza since Fernando Alonso did so in 2010 and have not won a drivers’ championship since Kimi Räikkönen took the crown in 2007. Their fans are anxious both droughts be ended and historically home wins have heralded further glories.

In 1979 Jody Scheckter took his only win at the track and in doing so the title for Ferrari, who also secured the constructors’ championship. In 1964 John Surtees, who had been nicknamed figlio del vento – son of the wind – lived up to it, matching his wins on motorcycles at Monza with one on four wheels. The title was his two races later in Mexico City.

Vettel is a keen student of the sport and will know these moments but perhaps be most conversant with just how much it meant when Michael Schumacher took the title for Ferrari, 21 years after Scheckter. In 2000 his win at Monza was crucial. The victory over Mika Häkkinen took him to within two points of the Finn. Two races later he was champion in Japan.

It had taken Schumacher five seasons to deliver for Ferrari. Vettel is now in his fourth but in the best possible position to emulate his great countryman. The Ferrari’s pace advantage should serve them well and he trails Lewis Hamilton by only 17 points. For Vettel, adding his name to Ferrari folklore with a home win is only half the job done. He will want to ride the wave from Monza to the title.

Should he do so, the tifosi will take to him all the more, which it has to be hoped is good for Monza, a circuit which like so many others is feeling the weight of the financial burden of hosting fees agreed with Bernie Ecclestone. The circuit’s deal with F1 ends after next year and this month Angelo Sticchi Damiani, the president of the Automobile Club d’Italia, warned that as things stand there is no guarantee it could continue to host the race. “We closed last year’s race with a strong loss and the 2018 budget will not be different either,” he told Gazzetta dello Sport. “It is clear such a situation is not sustainable in the long term. The ACI is ready to do its part but not under any conditions.”

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The circuit will celebrate its centenary in 2022, which will be a hollow affair if it has no grand prix but as things stand it is a real danger. “Chase Carey [F1’s chief executive] has always told me that an F1 without Monza is unthinkable,” Damiani said. “We agree on that but we must also deal in facts.”

In the short term Damiani would like a Ferrari victory on Sunday in memory of Sergio Marchionne, the team’s former chief executive who died in July. “A victory in Monza would be the best way to honour his memory,” he said and it will be an emotional moment for that reason alone should the team deliver. But in the long term there are reasons to be optimistic Monza will reach a compromise with F1’s owners Liberty Media.

Spa recently renewed their deal, with what is understood to be far more generous terms in hosting fees and Hockenheim was reported to have done a deal for next year’s race having also agreed a lower fee. Liberty do not like negotiating in public but it does engage in constructive negotiation and is aware some of its venues bring a history, passion and tradition that cannot be bought.

As Derek Bell, who made his F1 debut for Ferrari at Monza, told motorsport.com. “If it is the only race you are going to do in your life it has to be Monza. It is something different. It is the high speed, the atmosphere, the history, the oval, all the things that are part of that.”