ROUND 8: 🇲🇨 Monaco
FORMULA 1 TAG HEUER GRAND PRIX DE MONACO 2025
Circuit stats
- First Grand Prix: 1950
- Number of laps: 78
- Circuit Length: 3.337 km
- Race Distance: 260.286 km
- Lap record: 1:12.909 Lewis Hamilton (2021)
- 2024 winner: Charles Leclerc
FORMULA 1 TAG HEUER GRAND PRIX DE MONACO 2025
I normally do a race summary but in truth I don’t think there is enough material today to spew out my customary wall of text. The forced two-stop shook things up as well as it could - which is to say “not a lot”, as the track still limits what is physically possible.
There were some moments of strategy and some moments of “Monaco”. Ferrari’s pitwall actually were on it again, which is nice to see. Hamilton overcutting and gaining two positions ended up being one of the only moments of “action” the whole race. As usual around here the overcut is where you want to be, not the undercut. As demonstrated succinctly by Aston and Alonso, though it wouldn’t have mattered in the end what with his engine giving out. This man must have been cursed because the amount of bad luck he’s getting is something else.
Mercedes has to be singled out for strategy as well, as their no fucks given approach had me scratching my head. Maybe they were just so off the pace they didn’t even bother, but I have legitimately no idea what they were attempting to do this race.
Racing Bulls and Williams backing up the field with one car to give the other a free pitstop ended up being the best way to deal with the race, which is sort of farcical yes. I do wonder why more teams didn’t attempt it?
Always hard to pick a driver of the day at Monaco, in my opinion. I would have been tempted to give it to Bortoleto for his overtake at the hairpin if he didn’t follow it up by going into the wall. Antonelli also performed an actual overtake to take the position back, but it of course was aided by the overtakée hitting the wall.
Hadjar had a great finish, but it was delivered by his qualy and his teammates assistance giving him free pitstops. He didn’t put a foot wrong, I suppose.
Did anyone really impress this race?
EDIT: God damn I talk a lot, I managed a wall of text after all!
Lots of shots of Jeff Bezos getting to show off his yacht, I think he was trying to impress.
I really disliked it. If we’re racing all at the same time to a finish line, then overtakes HAVE to happen. Monaco as a traditional F1 GP is dead.
The pit shenanigans are not what I watch F1 for. It’s like the pinch of salt on the steak, brings out flavour, but salt isn’t meat and you can’t replace one with the other.
Max staying out in #1 just waiting for that flag to come was ridiculous, IMO. Even worse trying to back up Norris into Leclerc. People will disagree, and defend that it’s a valid strategy, and it is, but it’s also goddamn embarrassment. I’m sure everyone was looking at Tsunoda like hawks to see if he’d pull a “Nelson Piquet”. That’s just the kind of bullshit that NASCAR would pull off, and there’s a reason they’re dying: race integrity is a goddam farce if you don’t slap down all this nonsense.
We’re here to see the best pilots in the world pushing blazing fast, state of the art cars, to their absolute limit and beyond.
Instead, what we got was a clown show of a parade, with people intentionally driving slowly to create room for pits and whatnot. How absolutely disgraceful.
Can Monaco be saved? Maybe. The quali was thrilling to watch, so maybe FIA can come up with some sort of special event, with Championship points on the line, but where you try to set a better lap than other racers, like with brackets and if you win you race against (but depart several seconds behind) another winner, and losers Vs losers, until you end up with the top 2 winners fighting it out. I dunno, just a thought.