How F1 can tune its 2026 rules - and learn from another series' magic formula - to make Monaco shine

Since the idea of racing motorised vehicles around the tightly compacted environs of Monaco was first coined and minted in 1929, there have been 82 editions of the Monaco Grand Prix. Presumably, that equates to 82 separate years of people moaning about dull and uninteresting races...

We'll keep the axe-grinding to the next couple of paragraphs and then we'll move on. Every year, someone complains that races at Monaco are "boring", that F1 should stop going there, and then we'll forget about it for another 12 months until the same complaints are charmed out of the ground like little earthworms once again. Ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

That's not to say people should not and cannot complain about it - it's just that what makes a race interesting or boring is entirely subjective. There were probably many who felt there were interesting aspects to Sunday's race, for example; the effect of the extra stop was unknown, and the gap-stretching tactics first employed by Racing Bulls did confer a knock-on effect to the other teams. It made the actual race itself pretty uneventful but, as a timesheet-watching exercise, it was almost fun working out who was dragging out gaps and who could fiendishly take advantage of another team's strategy.

But, unless someone has a spectacular shunt or there's rain at inconvenient intervals, nothing is going to happen in a Formula 1 race at Monaco. And that'll be the case forever, unless someone knocks down the brand-new flats that have deprived us of Mediterranean views at Portier and builds a whopping big pier into the sea with a banked hairpin to bring the cars back to dry land.

It's hard to pinpoint what makes a "good" race. It needs to have chances for drivers to go side-by-side and make passes, but not do so artificially, and have fights through the field - and, ideally, for the lead. There should also be an undercurrent of tactical variation, where teams can also make the difference by going off-strategy with their two cars.

It puts one in mind of the Itchy and Scratchy focus group in The Simpsons, where the children both want to watch the cat and homicidal mouse duo in simultaneously zany, surreal and yet realistic, and grounded scenarios. We've outlaid what people want from a race, now it just leaves bespectacled dud Milhouse Van Houten to suggest that you should also be able to win things by watching...

But, using those criteria, it is possible to have good races at Monaco - every year, in fact. Side-by-side battling? Check. Tactics and strategy making the difference? Check. Not artificial? Hmm...we'll get back to you on that one.

Tight confines of Monaco mean it's very often a case of follow the leader

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

This is the bit where all of our reader metrics plummet, as we segue into the reveal that Formula E has excellent Monaco races every year. To those who have caught the all-electric championship's contests in the Principality, this isn't a particularly controversial point of view. This year's races, again, were brimming with action; one in the dry, with the new attack-charge pitstop format, and one in the wet as the drivers scrambled for grip on painted lines and across the kerbs.

It helps that Formula E's cars are 30cm narrower than the F1 machines - and the more prevailing theory that the series is a contact sport ensures that the drivers are more inclined to get closer together. As such, you see cars often going two-wide though the hairpin and through the tunnel, and making moves up Beau Rivage and through Tabac. It probably also helps that the cars are 14-15 seconds per lap slower than their F1 counterparts, effectively making the run uphill to Massenet a 'longer' acceleration zone.

The tactical elements in Formula E's Monaco visits go hand-in-hand with the accusations of artificial racing - but the addition of an attack mode zone is no more artificial than having extra pitstops or DRS. For those uninitiated, this is a system where drivers have to run across a timing loop off-line to activate the higher 350kW power mode (running at 300kW in the races). This usually requires two activations across a race, for a total of eight minutes (so drivers can take two and six minutes, four and four, or six and two).

F1's 2026 rules offer an opportunity, by making use of a power deployment dead-zone that will appear due to the nature of the circuit

The difference is that attack mode actually works, so there's an ebb and flow to the race where drivers have a power advantage and thus have to choose when to use it. Take the first of the two Monaco races from this year, as it hosted a double-header for the first time; runaway championship leader Oliver Rowland waited until the very end to deploy his final attack mode and scythed his way through the frontrunning pack to secure victory. He'd resisted the urge to take it until everyone else's attack modes had run out, and the gamble had paid off spectacularly.

This writer has reported on both F1 and FE races around the Principality, and there's a very distinct difference between the two events. As it stands, George Russell's assertion that F1's version of Monaco races is effectively a qualifying extravaganza is somewhat true, especially in recent years. It might surprise people to know that the pole-to-win conversion rate at Monaco is only 46% but, across the last 20 races, 14 have been won from pole. In the 20 years preceding, it was just seven. Reliability is as much of a factor in F1 and, with bulletproof cars in modern racing, it seldom has much effect today.

In Formula E, pole is not so much of a guarantee. It demands execution of passing manoeuvres and strategy throughout the race, rather than the F1 maxim of 'take the lead, stay there, win'. Having the variance in power during the race allows this, because it creates the lap time delta needed to put the cars in contention to get sufficiently alongside on the entry into corners.

Formula E produced plenty of overtaking in Monaco earlier this year - showing, with the right circumstances, it is possible

Photo by: Andreas Beil

So, how does F1 do this? The new 2026 rules offer an opportunity here, by making use of a power deployment dead-zone that will appear due to the nature of the circuit.

F1's 2026 changes will kill off DRS as we know it; for circuits that aren't Monaco, this will be largely covered for with the manual overboost system. The deployment of 350kW power from the electrical systems ramps down just before 300km/h, tending to zero at around 340km/h. Manual overboost keeps that 350kW allowance open for a while longer to create a differential, but there's a problem here when it comes to Monaco.

On his fastest lap of the race, Lando Norris' maximum speed was 288km/h. Cars do not reach anything near 300km/h around Monaco's city streets, so the overboost button will barely receive any human contact assuming the goalposts are not moved. Even though DRS is as useful as a chocolate fireguard in Monaco, it at least allows some opportunity to stay close to the car in front. Since active aero replaces DRS next year and will effectively be automatic on straights, it feels like F1 simply loses a scarce supply of options to improve the racing.

As part of this pitch, we'll co-opt an idea that Red Bull team boss Christian Horner floated and apply it to the context of Monaco, using Formula E's enjoyable races on the French Riviera as a basis: turn down the maximum power output from the MGU-K, and allocate a push-to-pass allowance. F1 is not going to need the full breakdown of power from both the internal combustion engine and the electrical systems around Monaco; 1000bhp is very impressive, but you don't need it all to guide your car through a multi-storey car park. Given the F1 power outputs, using the Formula E 50kW offset might not be quite enough to get the traction out of Portier and get on level terms into the Nouvelle Chicane, so let's make it 150kW.

Every car would run to a baseline of the ICE power plus 200kW from the MGU-K, and then we allocate some kind of allowance of push-to-pass to give the drivers some ammunition that they carefully - and strategically - need to spend. Maximum time per lap, maximum seconds or uses per race - whatever. It would need to be tuned so that drivers aren't just sinking all of their push to pass into defensive moves but, as a starting point, having a clear and defined power differential would give the power to the drivers to make the pass without having to resort to corner-cutting, or other dubious tactics.

Admittedly, this is a solution that suits nobody. F1 viewership is partisan these days; either one should want Monaco off the calendar, or accept it for what it is with no 'artificial' intervention of any kind. However, I firmly believe it should stay on F1's calendar, but with the effort expended to make it much more palatable. And 2026's rules do offer an opportunity here - and it would be nothing short of profligate not to try it.

So what do you say, FIA? If you like it, I've got loads more where that came from...

Could inspiration be sparked from Formula E and help Formula 1 at Monaco with its 2026 rules?

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images