I was lucky enough to visit the Italian Grand Prix this year and when I reflect back on my four days at Monza the first thing I think of is rain. Grey skies and drenched T shirts totally dominated the weekend.

However, the wet weather did nothing to diminish the size or enthusiasm of the patriotic crowd at Monza which must be one of the most passionate anywhere in the world. Fast cars are very much a part of the Italian culture so it should be no surprise that local fans besiege the Grand Prix in their thousands every year.

There aren’t any prizes for guessing who the locals want to see win. Ferrari has an incredible history and a legacy of prestige that Italians are deeply proud of. There is no other team that can boast such a zealous fan base, because as long as the Scuderia’s cars are painted red they are racing for Italy.

Ferrari’s loyal fans are dubbed ‘the tifosi’ and flock to Monza armed with air horns and red flares to create an atmosphere that you won’t find at a Grand Prix anywhere else. There was quite a large number of Lewis Hamilton fans at the race this year, but they were always going to be drowned out by the cheers and songs of the Italians dressed in red.

The tifosi are also famous for doing anything they can to get a decent view of the race and I discovered this for myself on Saturday morning. I took great joy in watching a large number of them clamber all over the crane arm of a cherry picker that was being used to house a FOM TV camera. The British cameraman was clearly agitated because he was unable to manoeuvre the crane with all of the people hanging off it, and his frustration would have been compounded by the aging circuit official on the ground that was doing absolutely nothing to help him.

It was the perfect example of the Italian’s relaxed way of life, and it was fantastic.

I wanted to watch the Saturday morning practice session from the first chicane and I ended up doing so from a grassy hill on the run down to the Curva Grande. I had originally been hoping to plant myself on the inside of the circuit at the very exit of the chicane but the view from there was difficult at best. The ground falls away just a tiny bit from the circuit itself making it almost impossible to see over the barrier. That was a huge shame because it would be one of the best places to see the cars in action. There was a little grandstand right where I wanted to be but is it reserved only for photographers, so I had to try my luck on the opposite side of the track.

As I made my way to the other side of the circuit, I was reminded of just how difficult it is to move around Monza.

If you want to get from one corner to another it can take you forever because you have to navigate the predetermined tracks that cut through the forest. You can’t simply walk from A to B in a straight line. This is in addition to the many fences that may block your path along the way.

Getting from one side of the first chicane to the other took me a solid 30 minutes. Firstly, I had to walk deep out into the forest near the middle of the circuit so I could get under the banking. The old corners effectively cut the general admission areas in half and there is only one point at which you can get from one side to the other. Once I was past that hurdle I had to walk back through the forest and down the pit straight so I could find an access tunnel under the racetrack. I then had to exit the circuit gates, walk around a large campsite, and then renter the circuit just after the first chicane. It was a very frustrating way to move about fifteen metres!

It was worth the trouble though. Formula One cars cannot be easy to drive in slippery conditions without traction control so watching them accelerate from the slowest part of the circuit was brilliant. Some of the drivers were managing wheelspin in fourth gear so it’s hard not to be impressed by that.

Monza is all about speed however, so I also wanted to watch at least part of the session from the fastest point on the racetrack. When the rain brought about a break in the action I jogged back through the campsites and through the circuit gates to a great spot on the inside of the main straight just after the pitlane exit. From there I was able to view the drivers scream past at full speed with monster rooster tails of spray behind them. That was simply amazing!

I was standing beneath a discarded billboard and was peering through some rusty derelict catch fencing that had clearly been replaced but never taken down. Where else but Monza can you do that? Wherever you go at the Italian Grand Prix it is impossible to forget that you are there.

Those passionate Italian fans really added to the atmosphere as well. At every Grand Prix there is a fleet of little Mercedes A class vehicles that shuttle photographers around the circuit. Whenever one of these hatchbacks popped into view before the F1 session got underway, it would be greeted by a chorus of air horns and plenty of giggling. The Italian fans were so enthusiastic they were ready to cheer anything.

The rain was persistent all day, but it was nothing that a hot dog and beer couldn’t fix.

I really wanted to watch the cars in qualifying at the famous parabolica corner. I made that decision for two reasons. The first was that it is probably the most challenging stretch of racetrack at Monza, and the second was that cars would’ve already gone through two timing sectors by the time they reached the bend, so I’d know what sort of lap they were on. I was hoping the view from the inside of the corner would be decent and I wasn’t disappointed.

The sliding Porsche Supercup cars were a great indication of the F1 action that was to come.

Many of the Grand Prix drivers adopt different lines through the parabolica and this was particularly evident in the rain. I was standing right on the apex of the right hander so it was easy to see who was on top form and who was not.

My gut feel from standing trackside was that Timo Glock was fastest of all. He held a tighter line than anyone else and didn’t adjust his steering or throttle input during the corner. He was obviously losing time to the leaders elsewhere on the track but he was killing them at the very end of the lap.

Nelson Piquet was not so impressive. He seemed to arrive at the corner in a different speed each time and was always having to fight the wheel. Driving a Formula One car competitively in the wet must be insanely difficult, especially when you’re under enourmous pressure to deliver, but that doesn’t hide the fact that Renault’s number two driver was struggling all weekend.

It was difficult to know what was going on during qualifying because the PA system was easily drowned out by the engines, and I could only see a tiny patch of big screen between the trees and a grandstand. Despite this it was clear towards the end of Q2 that Kimi Raikkonen was in big trouble and that all of the air horns in the world were not going to save him. Once the cars returned to the garage and the PA system was audible again, it was a shock to learn that Lewis Hamilton was also joining him on the sidelines.

Kimi’s failure to reach the final phase of qualifying was a huge disappointment to many of the Italian fans who had come to see him avenge his loss at Spa. Raikkonen is already on thin ice with the Italian press and his mistake in Q2 when the conditions were at their best would have done little to help him. His ‘arrive and drive’ philosophy doesn’t sit so well with the tifosi because they don’t believe he has the right level of passion to be a Ferrari driver. This doesn’t matter so much when he is winning, but when Raikkonen is not delivering he is a long way from being popular.

I saw a cartoon of Kimi in one of the Milanese papers and it featured him driving the Ferrari with a pillow and alarm clock, which best sums up the local fan’s attitude towards him at the moment.

One of the Ferrari supporters told me in his best English “this is not the Raikkonen we know”.

Maybe Kimi would set the record straight on Sunday.

That night I flicked through the hundreds of photos that had accumulated on my digital camera and removed all of the blurry rubbish shots. Goodness, there were plenty of those! By pure coincidence most of the decent shots left over turned out to be photos of Timo Glock, but sadly this did not end up being a good luck omen for him.

On Sunday morning the race organisers arranged a train that ran straight from Milan Central to a little railway station just outside of the circuit. The platform where this train departed was not marked anywhere at Milan so the only way I could be sure that I had found it was to wait around until an army of Ferrari fans appeared. The golden rule to getting to the circuit was ‘follow the red shirts’.

The little used train station at the Monza circuit is just outside the Lesmo bends, which gave me a lovely morning walk through the forest to my grandstand seat on the main straight. I was thankful for the awning that protected me from the drizzle and from there I watched the Formula BMW crash-fest, followed by the GP2 race and Porsche Supercup.

I also got to watch the drivers parade and grew a soft spot for the man who sits behind the wheel of the flatbed truck that carries the F1 stars around the circuit. He drove his customary slow lap around the track so that everyone had the chance to wave to their heroes, but then had some real fun once he dropped them off at the pitlane entrance. He presumably had to move the truck back into the paddock and did so with style. Once the drivers were all clear and he had the track to himself, he gunned it down the main straight and was absolutely cranking by the time he made it past the start line. Way to go champ!

Time flies when you’re having fun and before long the F1 cars made their way out onto the grid.

I must have had the best seat in the house. Not only was I opposite the Scuderia Toro Rosso pits, but I also had Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton lined up right in front of me. The media scrum around the championship leaders was intense and a few fans with binoculars started playing a game of ‘spot Michael Schumacher’.

The only disappointment leading up to the race was that it was going to be starting behind the Safety Car. I had been really looking forward to the noise of 20 F1 cars making full use of their rev limiters, especially after the GP2 start had been awesome that morning, but sadly it wasn’t to be.

I was especially disappointed at the time because I didn’t think the circuit was actually wet enough for a Safety Car start. I’ve since changed my mind, but I still maintain that rolling starts in the rain are not as safe as everyone thinks they are. One of the biggest accidents I’ve ever seen occurred during such a start at the 2002 Indycar race at Surfers Paradise. At least with a standing start the spray only comes into affect once the cars get up to speed.

The Safety Car wasn’t exactly slow at Monza though. It is worth remembering that it’s faster than most touring cars so Bernd Maylander was really giving it some behind the wheel. It may have looked pedestrian on telly but it was seriously moving!

There was a huge cheer when the green flag fell and Vettel popped into view followed by a massive plume of spray. The back of the field was very spread out so it felt like Kazuki Nakajima had already lost something like 20 seconds on the leaders before he even crossed the start line.

The crowd would shout encouragement to the Ferrari drivers every time they went past, and they went berserk when Kimi Raikkonen made a move on Giancarlo Fisichella for 11th. This was supposed to be the start of Kimi’s big wet weather charge through the field for his greatest Ferrari victory. Wasn’t it?

There was similar jubilation when Felipe Massa got past Nico Rosberg, and the kids near me in the grandstand voiced their approval with air horns, urged to do so by their Ferrari clad father. There was a real jovial vibe and I was hoping that both Ferrari’s could continue making their way to the front.

They couldn’t.

Lewis got past Kimi and the crowd went quiet. Those words of encouragement for Raikkonen started turning a little nasty because he really needed to stay in front of Hamilton. As the race grew on it became clear Raikkonen was having another off day and the passionate Italian fans would stand up and shrug their shoulders at him whenever he sailed by the grandstand. If only he would answer their cries of “what are you doing?”

Hamilton’s brilliant charge simply rubbed salt into the wounds.

The Italian fans still had plenty to cheer though. Scuderia Toro Rosso is an Italian team and I was surprised by the large number of supporters they have. I guess Minardi would have been very popular years ago as well. There are also very few people who dislike Sebastian Vettel so his time in the lead was always going to be well received.

Interestingly, the fans near me were also rampant Barrichello supporters. He got plenty of cheers and even a few songs in Portuguese directed his way although it did little to help his progress during the race.

In the dying stages of the Grand Prix it became clear that no Ferrari would be present on the podium, but that wasn’t about to stop me taking part in the famous Monza post-race track invasion.

I had already scoped out the hole in the cyclone fencing that I would have to reach in order to access the racetrack, and I knew that I would have to climb down out of my grandstand to get there. I cheered Vettel across the finish line, but as the chequered flag fell for the German my race was just beginning. I sprinted down the stairs and out the back of my grandstand, before running around to the right where I could bust onto the circuit.

Guess what? I wasn’t the only person with that idea.

It looked like utter madness because there are a few layers of fencing between fans and the racetrack and the marshals were vehemently holding their ground whilst the parade lap was being completed. I wasn’t confident that I could make it through before the champagne spray, but then I saw something out of the corner of my eye. On the other side of a pedestrian tunnel I could see some people making their way through a dirt hole that someone had cannily dug beneath a fence. I rushed over there and joined the small crowd squeezing through, each of us doing our bit to uproot the fence just a little bit more for the next person behind. I had to run through a marshal’s post and along the final concrete barriers before vaulting them onto the cherished tarmac.

I was one of the very first people onto the circuit, and was actually so close to the podium that I had to move back a little bit to get a better view.

One of the girls running in front of me snagged her handbag on the final layer of fencing and tore it open spreading her cosmetics and whatever else all over the ground. The enormous surge of people meant it was impossible for her or anyone else to retrieve her belongings from the stampede so I will always be curious as to what she ended up doing.

The look on Vettel’s face as he walked out onto the podium was fantastic and it was a great Formula One moment. I very quickly forgot about my customer car gripes because I can think of few other F1 drivers worthy of their first Grand Prix victory. I have had my doubts about Vettel but can now be sure that he is the real deal.

Despite Sebastian’s unbelievable drive the biggest cheer was reserved for Robert Kubica. The Italian fans loved him and chanted his name throughout the whole ceremony. They let out a massive roar when he looked down and gave everyone the thumbs up, so I think it would be fantastic to see him in a Ferrari one day. Perhaps he could join Alonso in 2011?

With the race over there was still one more thing I had to do before negotiating the public transport madness back to Milan. I couldn’t leave Monza empty handed.

I walked around to the Parabolica corner and scooped up a handful of gravel which now joins my collection of coloured Albert Park gravel at home. I also grabbed a shard from a large Bridgestone sticker that had been destroyed by Giancarlo Fisichella’s impact into the barriers. Who wouldn’t be thrilled with a tiny piece of white plastic as a souvenir from the Italian Grand Prix?

On my way back to Milan in the luggage compartment of a dangerously overcrowded train, I thought an awful lot about the weekend I had just enjoyed. I had come a long way from home to see the race and it was an awesome experience that I will never forget.

I travelled to arguably the most historic of all the Grand Prix circuits and watched the cars in action from every suitable vantage point. I climbed all over the historic banking and also scampered my way down the pitlane. I watched the very best drivers in the world struggle in very difficult conditions, and I was there to witness an Italian team triumph on home soil. I saw the first of many victories for Sebastian Vettel and was right under the podium when he sprayed the champagne. I had an unbelievable weekend, and I’ve come back with a handful of gravel to prove it.

What a fantastic way to spend four days.