Vandoorne plans on giving his all in Monza

After starting his home grand prix in Belgium with a 65 place grid penalty last weekend, Stoffel Vandoorne is looking forward to being in the mix of battle this coming weekend at the Italian grand prix.

Monza's layout is mostly long straights except for couple of chicanes and corners and it is a notoriously power-hungry circuit, with some of the highest average speeds on the calendar.

With the nature of the track, Stoffel is only too aware that they will face another tough weekend, but he plans on giving it everything he's got to try and finish in the points for the team's final race of the European season.

“Monza is a really cool place. I've driven there in Formula Renault 3.5 and also in GP2, and I won there in both series, so I know the circuit well and have always really enjoyed racing there. The fans are great, they show a lot of passion, and you feel like you're swept up by their enthusiasm the whole weekend.”

“Spa was definitely a tough race for us, and we've always identified Belgium and Italy as two difficult weekends for us. It was hard to manage our pace with the rest of the pack on the straights, and we're preparing ourselves for the same thing at Monza, but of course we'll push hard every day throughout the weekend to try and give ourselves the best chance of a good result.

“As usual, the important thing is qualifying, but it's in the race where we need to work on our pace and make sure we can maintain our position throughout Sunday afternoon. We worked really well as a team in Spa to try to we maximise our progression through qualifying and hopefully influence our prospects for the race, and I hope we'll be able to do more of that this coming weekend.”

This weekend's event will mark the 50-year anniversary of Honda's victory in the Italian Grand Prix in 1967. It was their second victory in F1, with the RA300 winning its debut race with John Surtees behind the wheel.

To mark the occasion, the team are planning a demonstration run on Sunday before the race where the fans will get to enjoy the Formula 1 sound of old.