When describing the challenge of the Monaco Grand Prix, it’s easy to point to the omnipresent barriers, the narrow public roads and the bumpy surface that combine to stand it out from every other event on the calendar.
Less said but equally important is the traffic.
Monaco is comfortably the shortest circuit on the tour. Coming in at 3.3 kilometres, it’s some 900 metres shorter than any other track.
Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every qualifying session and race in the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K. New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer.
That’s not a lot of space for 20 Formula 1 cars, every one of which will be on circuit at once in Q1 in a bid to avoid the bottom five.
“The track isn’t quite big enough for 20 F1 cars,” George Russell explained. “The strategy team say if you’re all perfectly separated, there’s only 2.5 seconds between every single car.
“As our mate Yuki [Tsunoda] says, it’s traffic paradise around the track.”
Tsunoda’s famous phrase is perhaps the best description of this circuit. The drivers love it; it’s just a shame they have to share it — much to the immense frustration of so many on Friday.
Of course the best way of avoiding rush hour in the race is to qualify first, and the first day of track action put an unexpected contender in the hot seat to take Formula 1’s most valuable pole position.
PIT TALK PODCAST: For the first time this season Red Bull Racing has beaten McLaren by having a faster car, with Max Verstappen dominating Imola. Is the title fight poised to turn on its head, or is it just a flash in the pan for the Dutchman?
IS FERRARI REALLY FASTEST?
Ferrari topping a cagey first practice at F1’s most specific circuit wasn’t totally out of the picture, but few would’ve picked the Italian team to sweep both sessions and end Friday fastest.
But that’s what Charles Leclerc delivered — contrary to his own expectations.
Last year’s Monaco winner has spent the week talking down the prospects of a repeat. Ferrari is coming off its worst qualifying performance of the year, and qualifying is absolutely crucial in Monte Carlo — and quite aside from that, the team looks increasingly confounded by its car.
But the peculiarities of Monaco have a habit of up-ending the from guide.
Ferrari has struggled around slow corners since it’s had to raise its ride height following Lewis Hamilton’s disqualification for plank wear in China. That’s put the car out of its happy place at most tracks, where the team has had to find compromises to keep the car performing across a wide range of corner speeds without getting as low as it would like to the ground.
In Monaco, however, there are only slow-speed corners — there are no compromises required — and at the same time the field is brought back towards Ferrari because very car must raise its ride height to compete.
So Ferrari is genuinely in the mix. But is it fastest?
Telemetry suggests Ferrari had its power unit turned up higher than McLaren did, with Leclerc gaining time on Piastri every time he was at full throttle. At the fastest point of the circuit, on the run down to the chicane, the Monegasque was 5 kilometres per hour quicker.
But there are two reasons to think this is less important than usual.
One, while engine modes are surely part of the story, the SF-25 was also clearly enjoying superior mechanical grip. Leclerc was getting on the throttle faster than Piastri out of pretty much every corner, which naturally means he would be reaching a higher top speed at the end of each short straight.
And two, there are overall gains to be made from a driver getting into qualifying mode early in the weekend.
For example, we saw almost every driver use up a set of softs in FP1 when at other track the qualifying tyre would be kept in blankets until later. This is to make sure drivers are constantly building up their understanding of how that tyre works on an evolving track ahead of Saturday afternoon.
Starting in a higher engine mode is part of that. The gap between how Leclerc expects his car to perform at full qualifying power and how it will actually perform will be smaller than it is for other drivers.
These things don’t mean Leclerc’s time is representative in terms of pure pace. But combined the Monegasque is no longer so confident he’s set for a bad weekend.
“Maybe a bit less convinced [that Ferrari will struggle], but I’m not convinced the other way either,” he said.
“Friday in Monaco is always very special, very specific. I think everybody is taking a bit their reference.
“It’s too early to feel very positive about the weekend, but let’s say that Friday has been very positive for us. I’ve been feeling pretty good with the car.
“The one-lap pace was strong, and whatever compound we were on, I was feeling quite comfortable, and the lap time was coming pretty quickly, so that is always a good sign.
“It’s been pretty smooth, and I’m happy overall with the car.”
Hamilton, who was 0.105 seconds behind his teammate in third, was more optimistic, having clearly had a ball returning to Monaco dressed in red for the first time.
“I will not be making many [set-up] changes at all,” he said of his set-up. “I would say there’s more to find in my driving — in lines, in braking.”
Ferrari isn’t ready to say it, and undoubtedly competition will be stiffer come Saturday, but clearly the red cars can be pole contenders in the year’s most important qualifying session.
McLAREN EXPECTS IT TO BE CLOSE AFTER ‘MESSY’ FRIDAY
McLaren started the day as favourite, but for a brief moment championship leader Oscar Piastri seemed sure to end it in the barrier.
It was a highly uncharacteristic mistake by the usually rock-solid Australian. He hit the brakes too late into the first turn and locked up, but rather than taking to the escape road — as Leclerc and Max Verstappen, among others, did at various points through the day — he speared straight into the wall.
He was at least aware enough to strike the barriers square, ensuring his nose cone took all the damage. He lost his front wing but did no more serious damage, and he was able to limp back to pit lane for rapid repairs.
It was a good thing he did. By the end of the hour he’d rocketed to second fastest and just 0.038 seconds.
But the day only emphasised how difficult it was to coax the McLaren cleanly around Monte Carlo’s narrow streets.
“I think when we get everything together the pace is quite good, it’s just not proving that easy to do at the moment,” Piastri said. “Especially for myself it’s been a very messy day.
“I think clearly Ferrari are looking a lot stronger here than they have done, but I think for today it’s more just been on my side that’s been quite messy.
“I’ll just try and reset a bit tomorrow, because I think the pace of the car is there.”
Teammate Lando Norris completed the top four behind Hamilton, but the second McLaren was 0.322 seconds off the pace. Almost all his deficit came between Beau Rivage, out of the first corner, and Portier, into the tunnel.
“It’s just difficult to get some clean laps in at times,” he said. “I felt comfortable from the beginning, but I need to progress more in some areas.
“We’re talking small things. It’s not huge, but when you’re talking about hundredths here or there, a lot of small things add up.
“It’s just too difficult to get the braking right, to get the cornering right, the tyres, the grip, the feeling all in the perfect window. It’s many different things.”
Clearly Piastri isn’t the only McLaren driver in need of a reset ahead of qualifying.
Oscar blunder forces red flag in Monaco | 01:18
RACING BULLS THE QUICKEST RED BULL CARS
The fastest Red Bull drivers were fifth and sixth and less than half a second off the pace.
But they weren’t wearing Red Bull Racing overalls. They were Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar at Racing Bulls.
It was a remarkable showing for the Red Bull junior squad and for two rookies experiencing Monaco for the first time in Formula 1 machinery.
Lawson, who’s had a subdued return to Faenza over the last five rounds, suggested the team had found its groove earlier than other teams and emphasised the challenge was to stay in it through to qualifying.
“It’s one of those tracks, compared to most tracks, where you’re just building up the whole weekend,” Lawson explained. “We made a good step from [FP1], but naturally tomorrow everyone’s going to keep building again, and we have to keep chasing that.
“We’ll keep working. We made a lot of changes today, and we’ll basically chase it again tomorrow and then see. But it’s a positive day.”
Arguably Hadjar’s time was more impressive given the Frenchman crashed twice in FP2. The first was him pinging the apex barrier into the chicane, breaking his wheel rear-left rim and popping off the tyre.
“I thought that was it, but I still managed to bring it back,” he said. “The car didn’t really want to, but I forced it to.”
He then set his fastest time on softs but promptly crashed again, this time by slapping the wall exiting the first turn, Sainte Devote — but by then he’d done enough to complete his team’s impressive first day.
You have to look a long way down the time sheet to find Red Bull Racing, with Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda closely matched but stuck in 10th and 11th at the end of Friday.
Having been less than 0.2 seconds off top spot in FP1, it was a step backwards in the second session, which the Dutchman attributed to a set-up gamble gone wrong.
“I think FP1 was quite positive but then we made some changes for FP2 to see how far we could push the balance, and I think we just overdid it a little bit,” he said. “I just couldn’t attack the corners any more how I would like, and then you’re just shedding a lot of pace, and the lap time was basically not coming out of it.”
The Dutchman remained optimistic that he could be in the mix, though he was cautious that Ferrari’s progress was real.
“I don’t expect us to be the quickest … but I’m also quite confident that we can be a lot closer.”
OLIVER BEARMAN’S WEEKEND IS OVER
While the rookies at Racing Bulls are aiming for points, fellow first-year full-timer Oliver Bearman’s weekend is all but over after being slapped with a 10-place grid penalty for ignoring red flags in FP2.
The infringement came during the brief red flag caused by Piastri’s crash. The Briton was exiting the second Swimming Pool chicane on a fast lap when the red flags first flew, but he only gently rolled off the throttle as he passed Carlos Sainz’s Williams, after which he slowed down more significantly.
“It is clear from the video footage that there was a light panel directly in front of the driver which showed the red flag, and the dashboard also indicated the red flag well before the overtake took place,” the stewards said.
It was a slam dunk. Bearman even acknowledged he’d seen the lights but had chosen not to act immediately.
“The driver claimed that he saw the red flags but decided not to slow down abruptly because he felt that slowing down abruptly would have been more dangerous and that what he did was a safer way of handling the situation.
“The whole purpose of requiring drivers to slow down immediately is for safety — they will not know what is in front of them or the reason for the red flag being shown. This is particularly so in a track like Monaco.”
It was a costly mistake with a poorly considered justification, and given the importance of qualifying, a 10-place penalty is all but guaranteed to leave the Briton battling from the lower reaches of the grid. He was 15th at the end of FP2; if he were to qualify in the same place, that would mean a back-of-grid start on Sunday.
His only hope for points now is for some significant chaos from the new two-stop rule for this weekend.
Lance Stroll has also been served with a grid penalty for causing a collision with Leclerc just minutes into FP1, though he’ll be demoted only one place.