The win, pole position and the fastest race lap for Lando Norris. Having given McLaren its first Monaco pole position in 18 years yesterday, today the Englishman added its first win here after a 17 year break. The last time a car built in Woking had won in the Principality dates back to 2008, when Lewis Hamilton, who finished fifth today, was first past the flag. This was Norris’ sixth Formula 1 victory, the second this year after the one at the opening round in Australia. Today the McLaren driver also scored his third career hat trick, after those in Zandvoort in 2024 and in Melbourne this year. McLaren now has 195 wins to its name, consolidating its position as the most successful team in Monaco with 16 wins.

Also on the podium were the local hero, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc for whom this was his second podium of the season and his second at this race and Drivers’ Championship leader, Oscar Piastri.

THE DAY ON TRACK:
The shape of the race was conditioned by the rule stating that all drivers had to use three sets of tyres, one of them being from the obligatory specified compounds, the Medium and Hard. All the drivers conformed to the rule, while Bortoleto actually stopped three times, as he had to make an additional stop after crashing into the guardrail on the opening lap.

The majority of drivers went for a combination of Medium and Hard, while the drivers from the six teams who had only one set of the C5 and C4 each, used all three compounds. There was a very wide variety of stint lengths. Some drivers, such as Tsunoda (Red Bull) did 72 laps on a set of Hards after just doing the opening lap on a set of C6, before finishing with three laps on the Mediums.

Others, including the three drivers on the podium, split their race into more equal length stints: Norris did 19 laps on his first set of Mediums and then used two sets of Hards (31 and 28 laps); Leclerc did the first 22 laps on the Medium before doing 27 on the Hard and then finishing with 29 on Mediums; Piastri did the same as his team-mate (20-28-30). Verstappen, who finished fourth, made his second stint on Mediums as long as possible (49 laps) before having to pit again on the penultimate lap when he was leading.

MARIO ISOLA - MOTORSPORT DIRECTOR
“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.”

Formula 2
Jak Crawford (DAMS Lucas Oil) won the Feature Race, his second victory of the year. The American made his obligatory stop just before the Safety Car came out in the closing stages of the race, thus getting ahead of the leading trio to take the lead, before a second red flag brought an already shortened race to a preliminary end. Leonardo Fornaroli (Invicta Racing) was second, having lost the lead in the closing stages, with Sebastian Montoya third for Prema Racing, after Arvid Lindblad was penalised towards the end of the race. Luke Browning (Hitech TGR) is the new championship leader on 70 points, three more than Alexander Dunne (Rodin Motorsport) and six ahead of Fornaroli.

Formula 3
Nikola Tsolov is the first driver ever to win five FIA Formula 3 races, having dominated the Monaco Feature Race on Sunday. Having started from pole, Campos Racing’s Bulgarian driver got a great start, going on to win with a seven second margin. Roman Bilinski (Rodin Motorsport) finished second ahead of Tsolov’s Campos team-mate, Spain’s Mari Boya.

Despite not scoring this weekend, Brazil’s Rafael Camara (Trident) still leads the Drivers’ standings on 77 points, 12 more than Germany’s Tim Tramnitz (MP Motorsport) and 16 ahead of Tsolov.