There is trouble afoot at Monza, the scene of the famous and historic Italian grand prix.

On Tuesday morning, Italy’s finance police the Guardia di Finanza entered the Autodromo Nazionale to investigate seven people involved with the operation of the circuit.

According to Il Giorno and La Repubblica, the Monza prosecutor suspects tax offenses, false invoicing and other discrepancies in relation to Sias SpA, the circuit operator, between 2007 and 2012.

Among the suspected offenses is the issuing of invoices for non-existent transactions in order to show a positive balance sheet for the running of some events.

The officers raided the Sias offices and also the home of the circuit director, Enrico Ferrari, and other high ranking officials.

Red Bull’s 2011 car was perfectly legal at Monza despite some suggestions to the contrary.

That is the finding of a Spanish sports daily in the wake of rumours after the Italian grand prix that the underside of the RB7 seemed to be hiding a suspicious secret.

When Mark Webber’s crashed car was removed from the circuit, photographs and videos of the highly-secreted floor were leaked onto the internet amid suggestions a ‘hole’ could reignite a double diffuser-type debate.

But a report in Spain’s Marca insists the Monza-spec floor of the Red Bull was legal.

“What is evident is the thoroughness of the work Red Bull is doing for each race,” wrote journalist Marco Canseco, “with a nearly always bespoke solution for each circuit.”

A separate report in Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport said Red Bull’s development success in 2011 has astonished teams like McLaren and Ferrari in the context of the resource restriction agreement.

“Nearly everything we bring to the race track, works,” said the team’s Dr Helmut Marko. “Our success rate is close to 100 per cent.”

Sebastian Vettel was sworn at by Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso after winning the Italian grand prix at Monza two weeks ago.

That is the unconfirmed claim of the German daily Bild-Zeitung, who said Spaniard Alonso whispered in the ear of championship Vettel before the Monza podium: “F*ck you, my boy”.

Earlier, to the passionate Tifosi’s chagrin, Vettel had passed Alonso to lead the race, a move the Red Bull driver described as “very hard but fair”.

Afterwards, the team’s outspoken Dr Helmut Marko said it was “good to show Alonso how the wind blows”.

Double world champion Alonso however denies Bild’s claim that he insulted Vettel.

“We chatted briefly but it was quite normal and friendly,” said the Spaniard.

Bild said Vettel would not comment.

But in an interview with the German broadcaster RTL, he talked about having the respect of his rivals.

“It’s important to me that I can feel it,” said the 24-year-old, “even if you have had an extremely tough race.”

Should Vettel extend his huge lead by another 13 points in Singapore, he will be crowned champion with five races still to run in 2011.

An analysis by Financial Times Deutschland said that with 27 per cent of the calendar to go, Vettel’s achievement will rank among the best in F1 history.

But Jim Clark (1963 and 1965), Jackie Stewart (1969 and 1971) and Nigel Mansell (1992) actually secured those championships in an even more rapid manner.

And the record is held by Michael Schumacher, who won the title with more than 35 per cent of the 2002 calendar still to run.

At least Red Bull figures are now starting to admit the inevitability of Vettel’s 2011 triumph.

“In many ways it’s more of a challenge to defend a title,” said Vettel’s boss Christian Horner. “It’s one thing to win a title, another to stay up there,” he told Die Welt newspaper.

“Sebastian just gets stronger and stronger.”

Stewards failed to notice an incident that should have seen Michael Schumacher penalised during the Italian grand prix.

That is the claim of former F1 driver Derek Daly, who was the third official in the stewards’ room at Monza.

Since last weekend’s race, many F1 commentators and figures have suggested Schumacher should have been penalised for his antics during a scrap with Lewis Hamilton.

Irishman Daly, 58, said the stewards were too busy.

“Race director Charlie Whiting asked the stewards to look at an incident between Massa and Trulli at the second chicane,” he is quoted by the Mirror.

“While looking at the slow motion, I missed the Schumacher/Hamilton incident.”

Daly is quoted by The Sun as describing the move, when he finally saw it on television at home, as a “blatant double-block”.

“Schumacher was warned repeatedly and should have been given a drive through penalty,” he said. “We let Charlie down with this one.”

As was feared by its rivals before Monza, Red Bull erased its final lingering weakness with Sebastian Vettel’s dominance of the Italian grand prix.
In recent seasons, Adrian Newey’s blue, yellow and red single seaters have been arguably the best when downforce is a premium, but not as good when the Renault engines must cope with long stretches of asphalt.

“The difference between this year’s car and last year’s car here at Monza is huge,” said runaway championship leader Vettel after Sunday’s win, according to O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper.

His teammate Mark Webber agreed: “The tracks where you do not need high downforce were our biggest problem. So I think our biggest improvement this year was in that area.”

Felipe Massa, whose 2011 Ferrari car has struggled this year on hard tracks and in cold temperatures, fully agrees.

“Red Bull have managed to develop a car that is capable of being fast and reliable on any track and in any kind of temperature,” said the Brazilian.

“They have a big advantage,” agreed his teammate Fernando Alonso.

“As the regulations will not change much for 2012, we need to find more than one second in our car for next year, which will not be easy,” the Spaniard admitted.

Sebastian Vettel could wrap up his second world championship in Singapore.
The German pulled out another 20 points in his runaway title lead on Sunday by dominantly winning the Italian grand prix at Monza.

There are just 150 points left to win in 2011, and Vettel’s lead is now 112.

“Are we watching one of the true greats?” BBC commentator David Coulthard wondered.

Asked if he will be celebrating his second title in two weeks, Red Bull’s Vettel answered with a grin: “I think we have put ourselves in a very good position.”

F1′s other two-time world champions are Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi, Mika Hakkinen and Fernando Alonso.

Sebastian Vettel was unbeatable on Saturday, his McLaren rivals admitted.
The Italian grand prix weekend looked set to be closely fought between Red Bull and the famous British team, but Vettel duly scored pole position by an easy half-tenth margin.

“Sebastian was mega quick today. That was untouchable,” said fellow front-row sitter Lewis Hamilton.

His McLaren teammate Jenson Button, third, agreed: “We were never going to challenge Seb.”

Red Bull entered the Monza weekend bouyed by good pace on the high speed Spa layout, but still wondering if the Renault engine would be good enough for the long straights.

“We did not think we would be on pole by such a big margin at a track that for the last two years did not suit us,” admitted Vettel.

Team boss Christian Horner, speaking to BBC One television, agreed: “It’s a massive margin, and was completely unexpected.”

Chris Dyer has admitted a return to formula one next year is possible.
The Australian, formerly the title-winning engineer for Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen, was ousted by Ferrari after the bungled race strategy that cost Fernando Alonso the championship in Abu Dhabi last year.

At Monza this weekend, he is making his first visit to the paddock since the ill-fated 2010 finale.

The big rumour ahead of the Italian grand prix is that Dyer could be snapped up by Mercedes, where his former Ferrari boss Ross Brawn is now team principal.

“I have many job offers,” Dyer confirmed to Brazilian journalist Livio Oricchio’s O Estado de S.Paulo column, “but I cannot go under contract until the end of the year.”

Ferrari’s former head of track engineering said F1 has not changed at all since 2010.

“It’s like Abu Dhabi was just last week,” Dyer, 42, smiled to the Spanish sports newspaper Marca.

He sounded only slightly bitter about the whole Ferrari affair.

“Look, we’re a team but ultimately I was responsible for the group of people who make the decisions, so in the end it was my responsibility.

“We’re not stupid, we don’t make decisions for fun. At the time we thought it (Alonso’s strategy) would give him the best chance to get the result we needed.

“We decided, we told Fernando and he made the stop. We are a group and no one was forced to do anything they didn’t want to do, we all thought it was right at the time.

“It was a bad experience but, in a sense, you have those experiences every week, every race, and looking at them again you would change them to make them better,” added Dyer.

In a further blow to Red Bull’s hopes ahead of the Italian grand prix, Pirelli has issued yet another clampdown on its guidelines about tyre camber.
It had already emerged that, after the tyres on the winning RB7 cars worryingly blistered at Spa two weeks ago, F1′s official supplier had told teams to limit their camber angles to just 3.75 degrees at Monza.

Previously, the recommendation was 4 degrees, with designer Adrian Newey admitting that the camber on the Red Bulls in Belgium was set slightly higher.

Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport reports that the camber directive issued by Pirelli for Monza is actually just 3.25 degrees.

As recently as Hungary in late July, the recommendation was 4.5 degrees.

Pirelli chief Paul Hembery said Monza is “very hard” for the tyres, with aggressive camber increasing the risk of overheating “especially with the hot weather that is predicted”.

McLaren’s Jenson Button thinks the new cautious approach “will put some people in trouble” in terms of lap time.

Lewis Hamilton thinks he was knocked unconscious after crashing out of the recent Belgian grand prix.

Cockpit replays of the incident, where the McLaren driver actually dented the Spa-Francorchamps barriers after clashing with Kamui Kobayashi, showed Hamilton completely motionless for 15 seconds in the wake of the impact.

The 2008 world champion admits it is possible he was knocked out.

“I don’t really remember much from hitting the wall,” the Daily Star newspaper quotes him as saying at Monza.

“It’s possible I was out for a couple of seconds, I’m not really sure.”

The crash was the latest incident in a series for Hamilton this year, and he told the BBC 2011 might go down as the “worst” in his F1 career so far.

“I have got to find my way, learn from any mistakes and try to smooth out the creases through these last seven races,” he is quoted as saying by the Guardian.

Hamilton, 26, said he has managed to avoid all the media speculation about his aggressive driving style since Spa.

“I don’t read them, but I hear there are pretty bad stories written about me, so I am thinking it will be good to give you guys something good to write about me,” he told reporters ahead of the Italian grand prix.

“I guess I’m an easy target at the moment because I’m always in trouble.”

Some of his rivals defended Hamilton on Thursday, including Sauber’s Kobayashi, who insisted F1 drivers “need to be aggressive”.

Agreed Mark Webber: “He’s not that aggressive, he’s ok. He’s just had a tough run in the last few races.”

Hamilton’s own McLaren teammate Jenson Button, however, admitted he doesn’t always agree with his countryman’s methods.

“I personally feel it’s better to talk to the team than talk though the media, but we are built differently,” he said.

GP2 frontrunner Giedo van der Garde’s manager has revealed talks about the 2012 season with three formula one teams.

Last weekend at Spa-Francorchamps, where the Dutchman emerged in second place behind the new GP2 champion Romain Grosjean, 26-year-old van der Garde was linked with the 2012 Williams seat currently occupied by Rubens Barrichello.

Media reports said he has “the most” sponsorship money to offer a potential F1 employer.

“That (F1) is the goal, yes,” NUsport quotes van der Garde as saying. “My management is in talks with three teams, so there are possibilities. There is no plan B.

“So there are some free places but it (F1) is a strange world.”

Van der Garde’s case is indeed unique, with his manager Jan Paul ten Hoopen doubling as the commercial director of the F1 sponsor McGregor, a Dutch fashion house.

And van der Garde’s father-in-law is billionaire Marcel Boekhoorn.

The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports that Boekhoorn may be interested in buying into the Renault team, and van der Garde has also been linked with Virgin.

“The real conversations (with teams) don’t take place until October, or at least after the Italian grand prix,” said manager ten Hoopen.

Red Bull will travel to high speed Monza next week with less-than-expected levels of trepidation.

The championship leading team was expecting its Renault engines to suffer on the long straights of Spa-Francorchamps, but Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber – with blistering tyres – delivered a one-two finish instead.

Italian grand prix venue Monza, meanwhile, is an even higher speed venue, and without many of the kinds of corners seen in Spa’s sector two that suited Adrian Newey’s RB7.

“In the last two years it (Monza) has not been a good track for us, so we’ll see,” Briton Newey is quoted as saying by Autosprint after accepting the constructors’ trophy on the Belgian grand prix podium.

Runaway points leader Vettel is happier with the prospect of racing at Monza after winning last Sunday.

“The car felt so fantastic (at Spa) and the balance was fabulous so it (Monza) should be manageable,” said the German.

Team boss Christian Horner admitted the Belgian result was a surprise.

“In many respects it was, yes, because power is a dominant factor and we thought it would perhaps favour some of our opponents more,” he said.

The RB7 was wearing a noticeably thin rear wing profile at Spa and the bespoke item will return to the car next weekend.

“I think that if we want to get close to certain engines on the straight we have to run a bit less wing,” confirmed Horner.

Historic Monza is more important to formula one than Rome, the Italian capital’s mayor Gianni Alemanno has admitted.
Rome came close to joining the sport’s annual calendar until Bernie Ecclestone ruled that each country should host only a single formula one race per year.

That scuppered the chances of a street event in the EUR district, and Alemanno confirmed to Italian LA7 news that he only wanted to bring F1 to Rome if it could have complemented the historic Italian grand prix at Monza.

“We proposed to have a formula one grand prix in Rome when it was practicably possible to have two grands prix in Italy; one at Monza and another in Rome,” he said.

“Then Ecclestone told us there could only be one grand prix in Italy and we said that the history is more important, so it (F1) was more important to Monza,” added Alemanno.

He added that Rome does not “steal things around Italy”.

“We respect the country just as we want respect for the role of Rome,” said Alemanno.

World rally driver Ken Block, famous for his online gymkhana stunt videos, will test the Pirelli F1 test car later this year.
American Block, 43, will drive the updated 2009 Toyota at Monza in August, the sport’s official tyre supplier announced in a media statement.

He will take over the car for a “one off” drive after Pirelli’s test driver Lucas di Grassi tests at the Italian grand prix circuit on the first two days.

“Everybody talks about formula one being the pinnacle of world motor sport so I can’t wait to discover it for myself,” said Block at Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Sunday.

Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno has pledged only conditional support to plans for a formula one street race in the Italian capital.
There is fierce opposition to promoter Maurizio Flammini’s plans for the race in the EUR district including from Ferrari, who insist that there is only room in F1 for one grand prix per country.

Mayor Alemanno has now declared that if that is true, then Monza and not Rome should represent Italy in F1.

“If it comes down to a choice between Monza or Rome, then we (the city) will step back because the Italian grand prix is at Monza,” he is quoted by Rai.

But Alemanno added that he does think there is “room” in F1 for two Italian races.

“A circuit race and a street race are different and we think the two will support one another,” he said.

When asked why many people – including EUR residents – oppose the Rome grand prix project, Alemanno said it is due to their “little knowledge” of the plans.

“I think it’s worth it because it will increase the tourist flow and the international attention of the whole of Italy,” he added.