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FIA SCRAPS F1 STRAIGHT MODE IN MONACO GP – HERE'S WHAT THAT MEANS FOR THE PECKING ORDER

The FIA has chosen not to use straight mode in Monaco for safety reasons. With fixed aerodynamic profiles, could we see wings designed specifically for Monte Carlo? Or are teams averse to spending their budget cap on a single grand prix?

The news is official: active aerodynamics will not be used at the Monaco Grand Prix. The FIA made the decision with safety in mind. There was a risk of seeing cars become too fast at the exit of the Tunnel, given the limited run-off areas, and it was considered prudent to forgo one of the key features of the 2026 Formula 1 cars.

The race in the principality will therefore be run with fixed aerodynamic surfaces and without straight mode. This is a major change, as there will not even be the DRS option that was available until last year.

Monte Carlo thus becomes a unique event that teams will try to prepare for in a specific way. The race among the manhole covers and curbs of the street circuit becomes a great opportunity for anyone hoping to challenge the otherwise unbeatable Mercedes.

On paper, Monaco should be favourable territory for Ferrari. The SF-26 suffers from a lack of power from its power unit at high engine speeds, but it is widely regarded as the best car in terms of chassis and aerodynamics through medium- and low-speed corners.

Photo: Erik Junius

As a result, the principality could become Ferrari’s chance for redemption. On a track where horsepower is far from the dominant performance factor, and where the aerodynamic efficiency obsessively pursued during the first five races will give way to the search for maximum downforce.

Downforce will once again become the defining characteristic of cars that were otherwise designed to minimise drag. In short, we may see a shift in philosophy that could lead to some surprises. So far, Mercedes has displayed an embarrassingly large advantage over the competition.

Kimi Antonelli and George Russell have won every grand prix so far this year (four to one in favour of the young Itralian), and the latest upgrade package introduced on the W17 in Montreal was specifically aimed at increasing downforce. Mercedes must therefore be considered one of the clear favourites, even if Ferrari will have to play the role of the team whose car seems almost tailor-made for the streets of Monaco.

And McLaren, which has the shortest wheelbase on the grid, can also nurture significant ambitions in Monaco’s roulette wheel of a race. Everyone knows that success here is built on a perfect qualifying lap, since overtaking during the race is practically impossible unless the driver ahead makes a mistake.

Clive Mason/Getty Images 

It will be interesting to see who chooses to invest special resources into the Monaco Grand Prix. Since there is no point in using rear wings such as Ferrari’s “Macarena” design or Red Bull’s reverse-wing concept, could someone develop a solution specifically for Monte Carlo?

McLaren, for example, will assemble the combination of available components that generates the most downforce. However, it appears that the Woking-based team has not been willing to spend additional budget-cap resources to challenge Mercedes’ supremacy. Led by Rob Marshall, the engineers will try to avoid the disappointment of Canada with an MCL40 that should nevertheless feel very much at home in Monaco.

And Ferrari? Team boss Fred Vasseur has promised a second upgrade package for the Spanish Grand Prix, which follows the Monaco race. It therefore seems unlikely that those updates would be brought forward for the event most eagerly anticipated by the home crowd’s favourite driver.

Still, it cannot be ruled out that some teams may unveil special solutions on their cars, hoping to pull off a dramatic surprise in Monte Carlo.

- Franco Nugnes

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DOES F1 NEED.TO CHANGE UP MONACO FORMAT AFTER DREARY RACE?

The growing size of F1 cars combined with the narrow streets of Monte Carlo made for a processional Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday. Peter Fox - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images

 MONACO -- The worst fears of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso came true on Sunday as the Monaco Grand Prix produced the most processional race in Formula One history. For the first time since the championship started in 1950, the top 10 finished in the same position they started.

The feel-good story of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc finally winning his home race after years of heartbreak was a glorious end to what had otherwise been a dire event at the most famous race venue on this side of the Atlantic.

Emotions were contrasting. While Leclerc was fighting back tears of joy late in the race, championship leader Max Verstappen, uncharacteristically running down the order in sixth position, had been fighting back tears of a different kind.

"F--- me, this is so boring," he said in a radio message to the Red Bull pit wall in the opening stage of the race. "I should have brought my pillow!"

Ahead of the weekend, Verstappen's old title rival Hamilton had asked the media how they stayed awake watching the Monaco Grand Prix every year. That same day, Alonso had said Monaco was the standout F1 week of the year, until race day.

Hamilton and Alonso are in the camp of drivers who simultaneously agree that F1 would not be the same without the Monaco Grand Prix and that something might need to be done to improve the spectacle of the championship's most famous race.

Verstappen had his own suggestions of what needed to change by Sunday evening. The championship leader spent much of his race behind Hamilton's Mercedes teammate George Russell, both drivers operating well below the limit of their respective cars in a bid to get their tyres to the end of the race.

Russell's radio comms were equally damning about the race that was unfolding.

"At this stage, we gain nothing from driving fast," he told Mercedes with 68 laps still to run. Hardly something you expect to hear from someone competing in motor racing's pinnacle series.

The narrow, twisty streets of Monte Carlo and the ever-growing size of F1 cars have bolstered the race's reputation for monotonous races in recent years, but even by the standards of the Monaco Grand Prix, this one was horrendous in terms of quality. One extenuating circumstance turned the dullness dial up to 11.

World championship leader Max Verstappen, left, was stuck behind fifth-placed George Russell for the entirety of Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix. Joe Portlock - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images

The red flag on Lap 1, caused by a collision involving Sergio Pérez, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg, prompted the race to be suspended. Due to a quirk of F1's rules, teams could change tyres during the wait. This meant that when the race resumed more than a half hour later, every driver had made the one change of tyre compounds mandated in the rulebook and, in effect, could go to the end of the race without stopping again.

"It was a very static race," Red Bull boss Christian Horner said. "The top 10 is as it started. ... The red flag effectively killed the race, because everybody just was going to run to the end."

It wasn't just Russell and Verstappen who were driving slower than they could. A little further down the road, RB's Yuki Tsunoda was dropping even further back in eighth. Early on, three groups had formed: Leclerc and the chasing three behind him, then a group of Russell, Verstappen and Hamilton, then the rest behind Tsunoda.

Williams driver Alex Albon, who claimed his team's first points of the season in ninth, was the driver stuck directly behind the RB for the entire contest.

"It's annoying because he had pace, he had so much pace," Albon said about Tsunoda after the race. "I was like, we can all manage, I'm happy to manage. We don't need to manage this much. We were managing so much. I was like, 'Man, I could get out and drive my Vespa around here.'

"I mean, it was so slow. It was so painful. It's actually hard to stay focused when you're driving that slowly because you're just not even near anything. You're not near any limit. He absolutely cleared off at the end of the race, and I was like, 'You could have done this the whole time!'"

Asked whether the rule about changing tyres under a red flag needed to be looked at in the future, Albon said: "We need to figure [something] out. Or maybe if it's a Lap 1 red flag maybe have a mandatory pit stop or something.

"It worked in our favour, to be honest with you, so I'm not complaining about it, but that is part of it. The medium guys at the start of the race were just ... I do think they could have kept up with the pack on the first few laps."

The fact that the pace did pick up toward the end highlights another issue with Monaco. Verstappen was one of the few who made a pit stop, which he could do thanks to the huge gap Tsunoda had created, but after easily catching Russell with fresh tyres, he got stuck immediately again and did not even have a sniff at moving up to fifth position.

Russell and Verstappen have not always seen eye to eye, but they appeared to share a bonding moment over how little they had enjoyed the race, a topic of conversation that is likely to pick up traction in the 12 months until F1's next race in Monte Carlo.

The transcript of their interaction, captured while Verstappen was being interviewed by ViaPlay, went as follows:

Verstappen: I think George and I are going to go for a run now, because we didn't really have any exercise. My God! That was terrible. So boring! Yeah, anyway.

Russell: At least a bit more interesting at the end. I was scared we were going to lose the tyres by driving so slow.

Verstappen: It's OK. You can't pass, so ...

Russell: We need to do something. They need to change something for Sunday. Mandatory pit stops, I don't know.

Verstappen: Like five or something!

Russell: Yeah, five!

Interviewer: Refuelling?

Russell: Refuel, yeah. `

Verstappen: Mandatory nap! I don't know.

Russell: One lap on foot!

Interviewer: Toilet break?

Verstappen: I needed to go to the toilet, yeah. It was bad. I went, luckily, so it was all good!

While there was clearly a tongue-in-cheek element to some of the suggestions, the prospect of a format or circuit tweak for the next Monaco Grand Prix surely has to be considered after how the 2024 event unfolded. Horner suggested the prospect of improving Monaco's main event should be high on the agenda of F1's decision makers.

"It's something that we should collectively have a look at," he said. "It's not racing as such when you're just driving around three or four seconds off the pace because the other car hasn't got any chance of overtaking. Monaco is such a great place to come racing, but the cars are so big now that we just need to look at, 'Can we do something that introduces an overtaking area?' Or at least the potential of an overtake? Because the top 10 is exactly as it started on the grid and not a single overtake in the top 10."

F1 will have to consider any changes to Monaco carefully, though.

One statistic that went around social media in the hours after Leclerc's win: In the Formula E race around a slightly different version of the Monaco track earlier this year, there were more than 200 overtakes. That's evidence that F1's bigger cars are to blame, some said, while others said it is proof the circuit can be tweaked to accommodate better racing.

But Formula E's race at Monaco should provide a cautionary tale. It is nowhere near the world-famous event the F1 equivalent has become. Part of that will be down to the fact that Formula E is a new series without the history to match the Monaco Grand Prix, but there is another reason fans do not flock en masse to watch the all-electric cars around the streets of Monte Carlo: they just don't look very good. The cars do not inspire awe in the same way an F1 car does around the narrow streets and, in the process, the kind of mystique F1 can generate at different points of the weekend is not there.

There is a prevailing school of thought in some corners of the paddock that the sport can always have dull Sunday races at the Monaco Grand Prix so long as Saturday's qualifying event is standout. And, as noted ahead of the week, the spectacle of one flat-out lap in Monaco is still one of the greatest things you can see in modern Formula One.

"We keep the extra excitement for qualifying as everyone knows that's a really important session," Tsunoda said on Sunday night. "Probably more than a normal race, qualifying has more value and we ended up in the top 10. Obviously the race is hard to overtake and maybe less overtaking for the spectators or whatever, but I think this is Monaco, and this is why qualifying is extra special compared to other tracks."

Whether that is enough for everyone remains to be seen.

- Nate Saunders, General Editor, F1

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FERRARI'S CHARLES LECLERC: I JAD TEARS IN MY EYES ON FINAL LAPS IN MONACO

Charles Leclerc sheds tears on way to special win on home streets of Monaco © NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP

MONTE CARLO, Monaco -- Charles Leclerc said he had tears in his eyes in the final laps of the Monaco Grand Prix, which he finally won after years of heartbreak.

Leclerc, born and raised in the principality of Monaco, had twice before failed to convert pole position into victory but made it third-time lucky.

He led the race from start to finish to end that run on Sunday, finishing ahead of McLaren's Oscar Piastri and Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz.

Leclerc said after the race he had been thinking about his father, Herve, who died in 2017 before he made it to Formula One.

"No words can explain that ... it's such a difficult race," Leclerc said immediately after the win. "The fact starting twice on pole and couldn't make it, makes it even better. It means a lot. It's the race that made me dream of becoming a Formula One driver.

"It was a difficult race emotionally, 15 laps from the end I was hoping nothing happens, already the emotions were coming. I was thinking to my dad ... obviously he had given everything for me to be here, it was a dream of ours to race here and win, it's unbelievable."

On top of the memory of his dad, Leclerc's godfather Jules Bianchi was also front of his mind. Bianchi died in 2015 from injuries he sustained at the Japanese Grand Prix the year before.

It was the recommendation of Bianchi, who was set to drive for Ferrari, which brought Leclerc into the company's junior programme and set him on the path which led him to the Italian team in 2019.

Leclerc was welling up near the end and had to remind himself there was a race still to finish.

"I think where I struggled the most to contain my emotions was during the last 10 laps of the race, more than on the podium," Leclerc said. "I realised actually two laps to the end that I was struggling to see out of the tunnel just because I had tears in my eyes, and I was like 'f--- Charles, you cannot do that now, you still have two laps to finish,' especially on a track like Monaco, you have to be on it all the way to the end.

"It was very difficult to contain those emotions, those thoughts again of the people that have helped me get to where I am today.

"It's only a win. The season is still very, very long. It's 25 points like any other win. However, emotionally, this one means so much. And I think the fact as well that we've started twice from pole position in the past and that we couldn't manage to get the win for one reason or another, that we couldn't really control, not in our control, makes this one even more so special."

Speaking about his dad specifically, Leclerc said: "It was very much in my mind, as I said. I think in every race I have done, there has not been one single race where I was thinking about this kind of personal stuff inside the car, because you've got to stay on it.

"Maybe Baku in 2017, obviously everything was still very fresh for me, so it was difficult to manage mentally. However it's probably the first time in my career that it happened again while driving, when you've got these flashbacks of all these moments that we have spent together, all the sacrifices that he has done for me to get to where I am.

"As I said earlier, it's not only my dream, but it was both of our dreams to get there. Obviously my whole family was supporting and obviously dreaming of that moment, which makes it even more special. That was again as I said earlier probably the moment that makes it the most difficult to manage today."

- Nate Saunders, General Editor, F

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