Monaco Grand Prix

Bicycling in a living room

Racing Fans

Last week in Imola, Verstappen put a turn-1 move on Piastri and was able to hold the lead for the rest of the race. The new Red Bull floor seemed to work well, and the Ferrari’s were able to finish in the top 6 after a brutal qualifying. Piastri still leads the Driver’s Championship by 13 points ahead of Norris and 22 points ahead of Verstappen, while McLaren lead Mercedes by 132 points in the Constructor’s.

This week, we’re racing in Monaco for one of the iconic F1 tracks. This tight and twisty city circuit is the slowest of the year, and teams will be using absolutely massive wings to get as much aerodynamic grip as possible. The rear wing this week will provide an additional 440 pounds of downforce at 150 mph (200 more kg at 241 kph) in Monaco compared to Monza.

Qualifying is more important than the race at Monaco. Overtaking is massively hard here, and this year’s F1 cars far larger than those of the classic battles we’ve seen in the past. Today’s qualifying was exciting, with Norris setting a new track record ahead of Leclerc, Piastri, Hamilton, and Verstappen. VCARB was the top midfield team performer, with Hadjar starting 6^th and Lawson 9^th.

W2W4: Drivers

George Russell has been known as “Mr. Saturday” for his qualifying prowess, but he was let down by the Mercedes car this week. He lost power on his first lap of the second qualifying session and wasn’t able to set a time, so will start in an inauspicious 14^th place. He starts one spot ahead of his teammate Antonelli, who crashed at the end of Q1. The Mercedes are only 16 points ahead of Red Bull in the Constructor’s standings, and they will need to try an alternate tyre strategy or some very risky moves given the challenge of overtaking in Monaco.

W2W4: On the Track

In an effort to make the race more exciting, drivers are mandated to use all three different tyre sets in this year’s race. This means that each team will need to make two pit stops and will drastically affect strategy. Some drivers might try to take a cheeky first-lap pit stop to get it out of the way and take advantage of a future safety car, while others might try to go longer, as the overcut is a strong strategy in Monaco due to the slow speed and low tyre degradation and challenges getting tyres into the operating window. Finding a gap for pit stops towards the end of the race will prove challenging given the short street circuit.

W2W4: Off the Track

Jack Doohan and Yuki Tsunoda have both been targets of online abuse and harassment recently after Doohan’s replacement at Alpine and after Tsunoda had an impeding incident on Colapinto. F1 launched an anti-online harassment campaign but they are in a tough spot. Similar to putting “End Racism” in the end of a soccer pitch only for research to show that these efforts could actually be increasing instances of fan racism, highlighting the online harassment may increase problematic comments. F1 is calling on social media platforms to more effectively moderate their comments and there will surely be numerous references to the anti-online harassment campaign during the race, but Lando Norris seems to have the right of it: he’s limited his exposure to social media so that any online vitriol isn’t even on his radar.

The race will start with partly cloudy skies at 9am EST, 2pm GMT. Next week is the final leg of the tripleheader, where everyone will jet over to Barcelona for the Spanish Grand Prix.

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