Monaco showed F1 badly needs new cars – Up/Down in Monte Carlo

Sport and tactics. It’s a match made in heaven (or hell, depending on your viewpoint).

They were meant to be together though, as demonstrated by the Monaco GP’s better-than-usual showing yesterday.

It was affected by the new F1 rule that all cars had to stop at least twice during the race, throwing up some unconventional tortoise-and-hare racing, where a team-mate would slow down to back the pack up, allowing their colleague to pull out enough of a gap to make a stop without losing a place.

It was probably the best Monaco show we’ve seen since Hamilton’s victory in 2019, when he made his Pirellis last 100 years to fend off Verstappen.

Sergio Perez’s 2022 win was alright, but that was in the rain, so it doesn’t really count.

Since the late ‘90s, most Monaco races have been truly dreadful, last year’s running (where everyone pitted during an early safety car period and so spent the rest of it trundling round in a procession) reaching ‘peak awful’.

Something had to change, and yesterday’s race was an improvement. A variety of things actually happened. You were mildly surprised at times. Not that you’d know it from the some of the misery pouring out from pundits and players.

“These regulations, I’m not liking it,” decreed commentator Martin Brundle. “I don’t want to see drivers all the way through the field playing a game.

“Monaco’s F1 problem isn’t the track.”

But drivers and teams have always played games. As well as holding other drivers up as a rear gunner to protect their team-mate, competitors have also driven slowly to preserve their tyres, taken unusual lines to protect their position, and seen their pit-crews get ready for phantom pitstops.

Apparently the overall verdict was that it wasn’t ‘real racing’, as if F1 isn’t highly contrived anyway. The cars all look the same because the rules are so prescriptive; drivers can usually only overtake with DRS; they have to fiddle with ridiculous hybrid systems and daft tyre compounds – the number of which they are limited in using anyway. Try and argue that F1 isn’t contrived…

The only way to stop ‘games’, and make it fastest driver past the post in professional motor sport is to give everyone the same equipment, and make each competitor a one-man squad. Otherwise, teams – plus lots of rules – mean tactics.

Anyway Formula E, for all its shortcomings, has proved through consistently exciting racing on the principality streets that Monaco’s F1 problem isn’t the track, the tyres or strategy – it’s the cars.

Alternate route – Going Up

F1 and the FIA tried something different with the two-stop Monaco rule – at least they gave it a go.

They should enforce the use of all compounds next year, or maybe even three stops. The days of ‘pure’ racing are long gone.

Poor radio relations – Going Down

While there’s only so much you can infer between snatched radio messages, it doesn’t appear as if the relationship between Hamilton and his Ferrari engineer Ricardo Adami is exactly smooth – as the video below seems to show.

“The information wasn’t exactly that clear,” Hamilton said afterwards.

“I didn’t fully understand ‘this is our race’. I didn’t know what I was fighting for. Was I fighting for the next spot ahead?

“But in actual fact when I looked at the data I was nowhere near any of the guys up front. I used up my tyres a lot in that moment but I was so far away from them anyway.”

Oh dear.

Full post race radio between Lewis and Ricky. And onboard until Lewis gets out of the car. That’s P5 in Monaco.

pic.twitter.com/9M0Jlm2qkj
— sim (@simsgazette) May 25, 2025

Albon roadblock – Going Up

Alex Albon did a magnificent job of holding up Mercedes‘ Formula Partridge, so much so that the King’s Lynn hero blew his top and simply cut the chicane and drove off into the distance.

More of this please.

That fact that Williams had a bit of an off-day and still scored points with both cars also said a lot about its productive season.

Silverstone Slide – Going Down

Aston Martin appears to have semi-sorted its car – but Fernando Alonso still can’t buy a point.

The Spaniard was running sixth when his green car conked out. Poor lad.

Lance Stroll has snared all Aston’s points so far this season – as Murray would say, incredible!

Rising Bulls – Going Up

Faenza properly capitalised on its speed for the first time this season to take sixth-plus-eighth.

Isack Hadjar is starting to look formidable. Yuki Tsunoda should be worried.

Merc mix-up – Going Down

As mentioned above, Brackley really got itself in a twist this Monaco weekend, after reliability woes and an inability to work out its strategy.

Just five points separates it, Red Bull and Ferrari in the ‘Race for Second in the constructors’ championship’ – exciting!

Monaco Baby – Going Up

It was good to see Norris winning again, if only for keeping the title race tight.

When will some needle play out between the Brit, Piastri and Verstappen?

Ocon roll – Going Up

Few would have predicted last year that by this stage of the season that the mercurial Esteban Ocon would be ninth in the championship – and that he would be spearheading Haas’s challenge for sixth in the constructors’.

His old employers Alpine are nowhere.