They say the Monaco Grand Prix is the jewel in the Formula 1 crown, but for some teams this season’s race is an absolute gem of a chance to notch up a rare victory.
The Circuit de Monaco is the most extreme venue on the calendar. The slow, narrow and twisty ribbon of tarmac is a real outlier that makes unique demands of the cars and drivers.
What works in Monaco doesn’t work anywhere else — and so the logic goes that what works everywhere else won’t necessarily work in Monaco.
Which brings us to Red Bull Racing.
So far this season the RB19 has been an all-conquering machine. It’s held a healthy advantage over every other car in every race so far, with a clean sweep of one-two finishes prevented only by Sergio Pérez’s back-of-grid start in Australia — and even then the Mexican finished fifth.
But if the car has had one weakness this season — and it’s a stretch to call it that — it’s performance over a single lap. The clever way the car manages its tyres during the race leaves it slow to warm up rubber for a qualifying lap, which means it’s vulnerable to cars with more aggressive set-ups.
While it’s swept every race, it’s lost two poles — one for a grand prix, one for a sprint — to Ferrari, which has been a consistently closer qualifying challenger than race rival this season.
Ferrari isn’t the only potential threat around this outlier of outliers.
Mercedes is also bringing upgrades that it hopes will give its drivers a more stable ride, confidence being key to a strong lap time in Monte Carlo.
And Aston Martin has superb slow-corner performance that could bring the green car right into contention.
The key to any of these teams causing an upset will be qualifying.
Overtaking is extremely difficult in Monte Carlo, which means qualifying on the front row is a massive step towards winning the race.
And that’s a prospect that’s giving Red Bull Racing pause for thought.
“I think it‘s going to be a little bit more difficult and closer together,” Max Verstappen said. “But we still have a good car, [we’re] just trying to extract the most out of it.
“We know that over one lap it’s normally not our strongest point, but nevertheless we still took quite a few pole positions this year, so it‘s still all possible.
“But for sure here in Monaco can always be quite a surprise.”
In fact it could be the development approach that’s made the RB19 so dominant that trips up the team this weekend.
To try to counter the lack of development time available to Milton Keynes this year, the team attempted to make the car a strong general performer in the hope that consistent points would be enough to stay in title contention.
Of course it turned out the car was much faster than the rest of the field, but that same general performance target has remained — which means outlying circuits, like Monaco, could end up being out of scope.
“The corners are so tight, so slow, that you sometimes require a lot of different behaviour of the car compared to normal tracks and also the way you have to drive it,” Verstappen explained.
“Sometimes your car works perfectly for these kinds of conditions and sometimes it‘s maybe not ideal.
“I prefer to have a quick car for most of the tracks. It‘s not ideal for Monaco, but it’s okay. It’s only one race on the calendar.
“We just want to have a good result, I want to win of course, but if that is not the case, I’ll just take the points.”
So if it’s not going to be Red Bull Racing, who has the best shot at an upset?
FERRARI’S SHOT AT REDEMPTION
If Monaco plays to Red Bull Racing’s weaknesses, it plays to Ferrari’s strengths.
The Monte Carlo track’s slow corners are very low energy, and while the SF-23’s propensity to fire up its tyres is a hindrance in race conditions at other circuits, it could be a real advantage here.
That fast tyre warm-up has been key to Ferrari’s strong qualifying showings this season, and team boss Frédéric Vasseur sees that as the ticket to a strong Sunday result given the importance of grid position at this track.
“What you can say for Monaco is that quali pace is much more important than it was a Miami or in Baku a couple of weeks before,” he said. “It means that we are fully focused on quali.
“I think that we were on the pace in quali in Miami or in Baku, and probably the track is also suiting a little bit more the car than some others.
“We have good hopes for the quali session.”
Rapid rubber warm-up has come at the expense of very poor tyre wear, but in theory there’s no major disadvantage to bad race pace in Monaco.
History is littered with slow cars beating faster ones simply because of the difficulty passing, and the undercut isn’t typically strong either, which means it’s hard to catch a leader off guard with strategy.
If Ferrari puts all its eggs in the qualifying basket and Charles Leclerc or Carlos Sainz grabs pole, it could be enough to put one over Red Bull Racing.
The Italian team also has a point to prove, having squandered a front-row lockout last year with a series of dodgy strategy calls.
Tightening up tactics has been a key objective of Vasseur’s installation as team boss, and he’s confident lightning won’t strike twice to deprive his team of a victory if it were to find itself at the head of the field.
“We took some actions on the strategy at the beginning of the season,” he said. “I would say that so far we haven’t had a very difficult race in terms of strategy — it has been quite clear so far — but I‘m more than pleased with the job done at the factory and on the pit wall on the strategy side.”
The team will also have some minor upgrades for this round — the aerodynamic tweaks planned for Imola — though a more significant round of upgrades is due next weekend in Barcelona, where the circuit requirements are less specific.
Could that all combine to be enough to get the red cars to the front?
MERCEDES BRINGS MAJOR UPGRADE
Mercedes is already one of the stories of the weekend, having brought a concept-changing upgrade to the car in a bid to turn its season around.
The W14 being built in the Monaco pit lane is barely recognisable for the car that raced in the first five grands prix of the season.
The sidepods are the most obvious changes — gone are the narrow vertical intakes, replaced by far more conventional horizontal apertures — while changes to the powerful floor will be more subtle.
But the new front suspension geometry is what’s most interesting about the overall package this weekend.
Not only is suspension a key performance battleground under these rules, but good mechanical grip is fundamental to performance around Monaco given its correlation to driver confidence.
Confidence is everything around streets like Monte Carlo.
“There are arguments to say it may deliver more on the track than it delivers on the sim because it‘s going to be helping our confidence in driving the car, whereas in the simulator confidence isn’t really a limitation,” George Russell explained. “So there are merits in saying there’s potentially more to be gained on the track than what we’ve seen on the sim.”
The new suspension could be enough to be decisive in the qualifying battle if Mercedes has got its sums right.
“We already, after Bahrain, decided that that‘s what we’re going to do, and so I was a little bit gutted when the last race got cancelled because I was excited to try this new package,” Lewis Hamilton said.
“I‘m really encouraged when I do go back to the factory and see just how hard everyone’s working.
“I feel like the team now have a North Star, they know exactly where they need to go, and we’re working on how to get there.
“The amount of work has gone in is incredible, and I‘m very, very grateful for the hard work.
“I‘ve been so excited to get in the car and feel these changes and I feel that hopefully puts us on the right path now to progress forward and try and catch the guys ahead.”
With such extensive upgrades, Mercedes is the biggest unknown quantity of the weekend. With no useful trend data for the team’s performance, a Hamilton and Russell coup can’t be ruled out.
ASTON MARTIN’S CHANCE FOR A BIG RESULT
Fernando Alonso says it’s been a long time since he’s had as much fun in Formula 1 as he’s having this season, when he’s become an unexpected podium fixture with 2022 backmarker Aston Martin.
But even so, you can start to see the briefest glimmers of frustration in the Spaniard’s eyes when he talks about his season.
Of course he must be satisfied to have the unexpected chance to battle for podiums. But Alonso is a machine programmed to win. First place is just two steps up the podium. Impatience is starting to set in.
Monaco could be the moment the 41-year-old finally snaps his 3668-day victory drought.
“If I tell you that I don‘t come here thinking that I can win the race, I will lie to you, because this is a one-off opportunity,” he said.
“There are specific race tracks that you need to gain the confidence on the free practice, get closer and closer to the walls. I will attack more than any other weekend, yes.”
But it’s not just naked aggression that will get it done for Alonso. His Aston Martin car could be a real weapon around this track.
There have been times this season that the AMR23 has been a better performer on slow and medium-speed corners than the all-conquering RB19, but the car’s higher level of drag has seen it ship all that time back to Red Bull Racing down the straights.
But drag carries with it a far smaller a penalty in Monaco, where there are no long straights to punish inefficient aerodynamics. On paper the car is all upside.
It could mean that Alonso suddenly finds himself back in the cockpit of a pole-getting, race-winning car this weekend. And you know he doesn’t need to be asked twice when given the opportunity.
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
The Monaco Grand Prix is live and ad-break free in racing on Kayo and Fox Sports this weekend.
First practice is at 9:30pm on Friday followed by second practice at 1:00am on Saturday.
Final practice starts at 8:30pm Saturday before qualifying at midnight.
Pre-race coverage starts at 9:30pm on Sunday, with lights out at 11:00pm.
