Race Report: Norris wins Monaco GP

Lando Norris converted his stunning pole position into his first Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix victory ahead of hometown hero Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri. Lando and McLaren ran their strategy, reacted to the developing race and managed the race to perfection.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc settled for P2 with a great effort putting late-race pressure on Lando to secure another podium for the Scuderia. Oscar Piastri had a good race as well and finished P3 reducing his championship point lead to just three points over Lando.

Win

A big win for McLaren and Lando Norris taking the Monaco win. With the mandatory 2-stop rule, McLaren did a good job of running their strategy and reacting in real-time to the other strategies around them and they did that through pure pace. Oscar toyed with the Monaco walls all weekend and by comparison, his weekend looked good but Lando was simply on point all weekend long. Sometimes it is a good qualifying performance that can turn things around and let’s see if Lando can take this momentum to the championship battle.

It’s a win for Ferrari who felt their slow-corner pace was a real weakness and yet they looked fast all weekend. Charles may not have won the race but given their season so far, it’s a win for finish in P2 for Charles Leclerc.

A big win for the Racing Bulls who made the most of the 2-stop regulation to build gaps and get both their stops completed while keeping both their cars in the points. Liam Lawson played. Avery strategic role in ensuring Isack Hadjar held his great qualifying performance finishing in P6 while Liam finished in P8. They made the most of the 2-stopper to maximize their results.

A win for Haas F1 with Esteban Ocon converting a great qualifying performance into a P7 finish in the points. Even Ollie Bearman was able to go from dead last to P12 so a good weekend but RB’s results meant that Haas fell a position in the constructor’s championship.

Like the RB’s, Williams also made the most of the 2-stop regulation as both Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz worked together backing traffic up to build gaps for each other securing P9 and P10 respectively. While James Vowels said he didn’t like going racing like this, the rules are the rules and Williams made the most of it.

Fail

A fail for Pierre Gasly and Alpine with the crash into Yuki Tsunoda early on ending his race leaving the heavy lifting for the young Argentinian, Franco Colapinto, who managed a P13 finish.

A fail for Mercedes who seemed to be engaged in self flagellation if I’m honest. I am not sure what their strategy was during the race. It’s almost like they phoned it in after a poor qualifying session. If their strategy was all down to a Safety Car, it was always going to be a questionable strategy. From where they started, there probably wasn’t a lot they could do but part of that strategy is also reacting to other team’s strategies and you wonder if they might not have split strategies to give them a chance for points.

A rough day for Red Bull with Yuki down in P17 and he started far enough back to be of little help to Max Verstappen in assisting with building a gap like other teams did. This left Max fighting his own race and ending in P4 so it was really damage limitation.

WTH

Hindsight is always 20/20 and it would be easy to criticize the 2-stop rule. Heading into the weekend, most of the drivers and even teams were intrigued about what the 2-stop mandate might bring strategically and there was even an excitement about what might happen. Dare I say a positive outlook about the impact the rule might have on the race.

As it turned out, the teams exploited the rule and drivers managed the race in order to maximize their chances which meant backing cars up, going slowly to create gaps for their leading teammates. This worked a treat for RB and Williams but about mid-race, commentary changed from excitement about the 2-stop rule to disdain.

Despite the 2-stop rule, I do love Monaco and it was a great event and terrific to watch Lando Norris win his first Monaco…baby!

MARIO ISOLA – PIRELLI DIRECTOR OF MOTORSPORT

“It’s not easy to give a verdict in the heat of the moment on the race that’s just ended, but I believe it’s fair to say that it was well worth trying something different in such a unique Grand Prix as this one. One has to say that the new regulation introduced for this event certainly got people talking about what might happen in the race, both those inside the sport and also the fans. While it’s true that the first four past the flag finished in grid order, it is also true that there were five changes of leader, with three different drivers involved, while behind them there was plenty of action, certainly more than usual, and more than we saw last year for example.

Honestly, I think that overall, the spectators at the track and those watching on television, even if they were not majorly entertained, were certainly not bored, which has often been the case in races that haven’t been enlivened by unusual circumstances such as rain or safety cars. In the end, this is Monaco, take it or leave it: qualifying that leaves you with your heart in your mouth and a race where overtaking is almost impossible. Only after a careful analysis of the race, can everyone involved deliver an accurate verdict on this experiment.

On the tyre front, as expected the Medium and Hard were the most used compounds: both proved capable of being able to cover almost the entire race distance without the need to pit. It’s possible the Medium required a bit more management, but overall, its level of degradation was more than acceptable. This weekend the C6 proved to be a good qualifying tyre, but above all, it played a tactical role, obviously pushing the teams to use the Medium more and, let’s not forget that this tyre was the Soft last year. That was exactly our goal and we await with keen interest to see how it will perform in Montreal, another type of track.”

Monaco GP Results:

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