01Glittering Prize
The original street circuit, home of grand prix glitz and glamour, the ultimate test of driving skill and precision, Jewel in the Crown of Formula 1, what can you say about the Monaco Grand Prix that hasn’t been said a thousand times?
The short answer is – not much, aside from the fact that it’s Round 8 of the 2025 season, we’re coming off the back of a mighty win in Imola, the full party-spec, floating Energy Station has been steered into Port Hercule, and we’re to tackle F1’s most iconic race for the 20th time.
PATRÓN bar on the Red Bull Energy Station in Monaco© Oracle Red Bull Racing
It’s a track we’ve enjoyed enormous success at too. In fact, with seven victories, we’ve got a 35%-win rate in the Principality, and we’re tied joint third with Lotus on the table of most wins. Not bad for a team that only got its first Monaco victory in 2010.
Webber Celebrates Our First Monaco Win© Getty Images
Our recent form here is pretty impressive, with three wins from the last four events. Max has been on the top step twice – in 2021 and 2023 – and Checo took the win in between.
For Yuki, it’s been a trickier venue. Our Japanese driver made his first appearance here in 2021 with a P16 finish for AlphaTauri and for the following two years he hovered around the mid-teens. Last year, though, he made a breakthrough and took his VCARB 01 to eighth place at the flag for his first points in the Principality.
Can he do the same this time around? Can Max grab a third win on these mean streets? On Sunday in Imola, the defending champion was taking a cautious approach. “Imola has quite a few high-speed corners, which our car likes,” he said. “But Monaco is very different. Last year was difficult for us and I don't expect it to be a lot easier this time around because there's a lot of low speed. But we'll see. I think we took a step forward with the setup of the car, which helps.”
WatchMax'sReactionfromMonaco2024
02Challenges and Key Factors
There are plenty of words you can use to describe the Circuit de Monaco. Exacting is one. Tortuous is another. But perhaps the best description of what racing around the Principality is actually like came from three-time F1 champion Nelson Piquet who famously said: “it’s like riding a bicycle around your living room”.
Monaco’s streets are incredibly tight and throwing an F1 car around them without hitting the barriers is an act of sublime skill. And it’s one that’s often learned the hard way. Just ask Max, who a week after his first win in 2016, dropped the car into the barriers here in Q1 and had to start from the pit lane – and then did the same in FP3 in 2018 and missed qualifying altogether. Mistakes have been few and far between since then, but Monaco always has the tendency to bite you hard, and that’s what makes Saturday’s qualifying such a thrilling spectacle.
Beautiful Monaco© Getty Images
While Monaco gives us probably the most nail-biting qualifying session of the season, the general consensus is that Sundays are often… less than overwhelming. The narrow streets make overtaking very difficult and with track position of paramount importance, teams stick to a one-stop programme with everyone pitting in the same window, depending on their starting tyre. Last year, for example, a lap one smash involving Checo and the Haas cars of Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg brought out the red flags. Everyone headed to the pit lane, switched from their starting tyre and the bulk of the field raced their new set to the flag, which led to very minimal on-track overtaking from the start of the race right through to the chequered flag. 2025 sees a new mandate unique to Monaco, forcing a minimum of two pit stops which should at least bring some strategic variation into play and potentially create tyre offsets that spice things up.
Monaco has always been one of the bumpier tracks on the calendar and patches of track are regularly resurfaced. This year, though, almost half of the circuit has been resurfaced, with the entire section between Turn 12 and Turn 3 featuring new tarmac. How that will feel and how it affects handling we’ll only begin to find out on Friday.
To put it bluntly, there’s hardly any. You could try into Sainte Devote, or maybe out of the tunnel into the Nouvelle Chicane, or even down the inside into the hairpin. All are tricky moves, but not impossible, as Max proved in 2018 starting the race from dead last and getting through the field to ninth at the flag.
Another potential curve ball this weekend is the presence of the C6 compound as the Soft tyre. Homologated at the end of 2025 specifically to offer a wider range of strategy choices on circuits where the forces exerted on the tyres are not very high, the C6 made its debut last weekend in Imola, causing confusion throughout the field with its fragile nature and unpredictability, with the same likely to occur this weekend.
03Circuit de Monaco: Track Layout & Key Features
At just 3.337 kilometres in length, Monaco is the shortest track on the calendar, and it’s taken at the slowest average speed of the year. The barriers make it look mighty quick, however, and it really is the best track on the planet to see the drivers at their work.
Seeing Double In Monaco© Getty Images
After the short blast from the start line to Turn 1, the track heads uphill at blistering speed to Massenet and Casino Square. That’s followed by the short run down to the slow, second gear, right turn of Mirabeau and then it's downhill to the famous hairpin and the double right-hander of Portier.
After that it’s a short blast through the tunnel, where the light changes dramatically, especially on exit. Then it’s further downhill where, under braking, the brave might try a move into the 50km/h, second gear Nouvelle Chicane.
The start of Sector 3, with the 150km/h left-hand flick of Tabac and the incredibly rapid changes of direction through the Swimming Pool section, is utterly breathtaking and from there it’s just Turn 18 Rascasse, the right-hander of Antony Noghes before you open the wing for the circuit’s sole, and quite short, DRS zone and across the start-finish line to begin another rollercoaster ride around F1’s most daunting street track
