Lando Norris has navigated a significant and somewhat turbulent eight days, having undeniably boosted his prospects in the world championship.
He successfully silenced many doubts within the F1 paddock and put past struggles behind him with remarkable overtakes at Imola and a stunning pole position in Monaco, achieved under intense pressure from top competitors including Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri, Lewis Hamilton, and Max Verstappen. Following his pole, he delivered a largely flawless performance to secure victory on the street circuit, managing considerable chaos and challenges throughout the race.
With this race marking the conclusion of the first third of the season, only three points now separate Norris from his McLaren teammate, Oscar Piastri. Piastri experienced what was, for him, a somewhat chaotic weekend, involving contact with the barriers at St Devote in practice and later stating he hit the barriers more times in this single weekend than in his entire prior career.
Nevertheless, the young Australian driver secured yet another podium finish. Had it not been for one challenging rainy corner in his home race in Melbourne, he would have collected a trophy at every event this season, extending his impressive streak of 34 consecutive points-scoring weekends.
Charles Leclerc approached the Monaco weekend expressing apparent certainty that his car lacked performance in slow corners, advising others not to bet on him. Despite this, he remarkably topped every practice session. However, missing out on pole position by a tiny margin ultimately confined him to second place in the race, a familiar narrative for him at Monaco.
Much like the previous year, Max Verstappen`s Red Bull faced difficulties handling the kerbs and the tight confines of the Principality compared to its usual performance. Despite this, he still pushed the car to its limits as he typically does.
Verstappen was set to start fourth, but Lewis Hamilton unintentionally impeded him during qualifying due to incorrect information from his engineer. This resulted in Hamilton receiving a painful three-place grid penalty, dropping him to seventh. This penalty forced Lewis into a supportive team role during the race, leading to a frustrating and solitary fifth-place finish.
“I was surprised by the omission in pit-stop rules”
For decades, it`s been well known in Monaco that the starting order from Saturday`s qualifying largely dictates the race outcome, unless rain, ill-timed safety cars, or red flags intervene. That`s simply the nature of the circuit. This was famously illustrated 33 years ago in 1992, when Nigel Mansell, despite having significantly fresher tyres after a late puncture, was unable to overtake Ayrton Senna.
As I finished fifth in that race, I distinctly remember the challenges. I also recall managing many overtakes in my Brabham in 1989, but this was partly due to a two-minute pit stop for a new battery (located under my seat!) which gave me a massive tyre advantage. I only managed those passes by throwing all caution aside and aggressively attacking every opportunity to claw my way back to sixth place, somehow surviving the numerous skirmishes. Additionally, back then, you could sometimes pass a driver if they missed a gearshift, which is impossible with today`s cars.
So, let`s not pretend that the difficulties in racing and overtaking at Monaco are unique to the current generation of wide, digital cars. While it`s true that spindly cars might have been able to overtake more easily 60 years ago, race results back then were frequently dominated by poor reliability and crashes among far less sophisticated machinery.
Last year in Monaco, a heavy first-lap accident triggered a red flag. This allowed all remaining drivers to change their tyres in the pits without losing track position, thus fulfilling the regulation requiring the use of two different tire compounds. They then raced to the finish without further stops, provided they maintained a sufficiently slow pace. The top 10 cars on the grid finished in precisely the same order they started.
With the aim of improving the spectacle, and after considerable consultation between teams, the FIA, and F1, a decision was made to introduce a regulation specific to Monaco for this year. This rule mandated two pit stops and therefore the use of three different sets of dry tyres, even if it rained.
I won`t criticize the intention behind trying to improve the show in good faith. However, I was somewhat surprised that the rule didn`t mandate one of those stops to be taken by, say, the halfway point, or perhaps earlier. It was evident from the start that some teams near the back had little to lose by pitting early, cycling through their stops. Conversely, those at the front would delay their second stop until very late in the race to broaden their window of opportunity should a safety car or red flag occur.
“Slow pace is not what F1 stands for”
It also became immediately clear that teams could use one car as a strategic tool, driving slowly ahead to create the necessary 21-second gap for their other car to make a pit stop without losing position.
And that`s largely what transpired, although the degree to which teams, particularly Racing Bulls and Williams, were willing to deliberately slow one of their cars was quite startling. You can`t entirely blame them, though – both teams successfully got both their cars into the points after a very solid qualifying performance.
Relatively early in the race commentary, I realized that our main discussion points, aside from Lando Norris surviving a lock-up scare at the first corner, revolved around how incredibly slowly some drivers were lapping and endless debates about pit stop strategies.
Naturally, it`s common practice for the race leader in Monaco to slow the pace significantly, backing up the entire field in the early laps to prevent rivals from gaining a pit stop window. They then eventually pick up the pace to create their own opportunity.
However, what we witnessed instead were specific cars driving four seconds off the potential pace, creating frustrated queues behind them. This wasn`t a pretty or impressive spectacle, though it proved effective for some teams. But it`s hardly representative of what Formula 1 should be about.
Mercedes employed a peculiar strategy with their two cars, which were stuck in the latter half of the field following Kimi Antonelli`s qualifying crash and a mechanical problem for George Russell. In the race, they seemed remarkably hesitant about pitting at all, with Russell finally stopping on laps 64 and 70, and Antonelli on laps 71 and 73, out of 78. They were particularly hampered by the fluctuating speed of the Williams cars ahead. On lap 64, Russell`s patience ran out, and he forcefully cut through the middle of the seafront chicane, making it very clear over the radio that he would rather take a penalty than remain stuck behind the Williams roadblock.
Unfortunately for Russell, he was indeed given a drive-through penalty, which typically costs around 20 seconds. The FIA issued the following explanation:
“Anticipating that situations such as this might happen at this Monaco Grand Prix, all the teams were informed before the race by the Race Director (at the Stewards request) that the stewards would look carefully at a deliberate leaving of the track at Turn 10 to overtake a car or a train of slow cars. That communication also made it clear that the guideline penalty of 10 seconds may be insufficient for this deliberate infringement and that the penalty applied may be a greater penalty than 10 seconds. We therefore considered that Car 63`s deliberate infringement warranted a drive through penalty and we so imposed.”
Despite the penalty, Russell still managed to finish 11th, just outside the points.
When we look at the final results after all the pre-race hype and discussion about the mandatory two-stop rule, very little actually changed. Lewis Hamilton, despite his grid penalty (for an unrelated issue), managed to pass Isack Hadjar`s impressively driven Racing Bull during the pit stop phase. Sadly, Fernando Alonso of Aston Martin suffered a car failure and retired. Both of these outcomes likely would have happened regardless of the new rule.
Alongside Racing Bulls` Hadjar and Liam Lawson finishing sixth and eighth respectively, and Williams` Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz securing ninth and tenth places, Esteban Ocon delivered another noteworthy performance. His under-the-radar seventh-place finish for Haas was outstanding, achieved without the assistance of a teammate acting as a roadblock.
“The experiment didn`t work”
Ultimately, the mandatory two-stop experiment did not succeed in achieving its goal. We simply have to manage expectations for the race day in Monaco. We can do our best to make minor adjustments to potentially ease overtaking slightly, but we must also acknowledge that Monaco qualifying remains one of the most unique and special hours in Formula 1 or any sport. The alternative, not racing there, is simply not a viable option.
The core problem is dictated by the track layout itself; there isn`t available space to create long straights or wider zones conducive to overtaking. And even on wider tracks, there`s typically only one optimal racing line that gets rubbered in. My son Alex offered an interesting, albeit slightly facetious, suggestion: allow each driver one “joker” moment per race where they can deliberately cut through the no-man`s land at the chicane, like George Russell did, and be allowed to keep the position gained and pull away. This would also discourage drivers from lapping excessively slowly.
However, there`s no doubt that any change introduced in Formula 1 will inevitably have unintended consequences – that`s just the nature of the sport.
Meanwhile, at the front, McLaren, Ferrari, and one Red Bull car calmly navigated the chaos, running their own races undisturbed. Lewis Hamilton, in fifth place, was the last car not to be lapped, finishing 51 seconds behind Norris.
There was a moment of tension for McLaren when Norris began to catch Max Verstappen, who was desperately trying to make his 50-lap-old tyres last in the slim hope of a red flag intervention, before finally pitting on lap 77. During this period, Charles Leclerc`s Ferrari was right on Norris`s gearbox, but Lando held his composure. On the final lap, with Verstappen finally having pitted out of his way, Norris unleashed the fastest lap of the race, a clear signal of his regained confidence.
The next race is the Spanish Grand Prix this coming weekend, which presents an entirely different challenge for the teams, cars, and drivers.
