What we learned in Friday practice for the F1 Monaco GP

Away from the track, Monaco's not what one would call a social leveller; this is a tax haven, after all, where the rich flock to save their millions from being spent on things like schools, hospitals, or the local council hoping to raise a few hundred pounds to fill in a decade-old pothole. They flock to save it, and flock to spend it on yachts, cars, and other material status symbols.

On track? It doesn't matter how successful or experienced you are, or how many championships you've accrued; if you make a mistake, you're in the wall. Formula 1 championship leader? Oscar Piastri hit the wall in FP2. Monaco Grand Prix winner? Charles Leclerc didn't quite hit the wall in FP1, but he did careen into the back of Lance Stroll's Aston Martin as the Canadian ambled across his path into the hairpin. F1 rookie? Isack Hadjar had two wall-based incidents during FP2, the second proving far more damaging to his learning than the first.

So here's the lesson for Monaco: don't hit anything. And if you have to hit something, don't hit it very hard.

Leclerc recovered from his FP1 heart-in-mouth moment to lead the opening hour of F1 practice, and then followed up that feat with top spot in FP2 to boot. During the second session, the Monegasque continued to reel off bigger and better laps on the same set of soft C6 tyres to pull away from the field on the timing board, and eventually landed on a 1m11.355s. Beat that, he presumably mused on his final full-pelt threading of his Ferrari through his childhood streets, as he waited for his rivals to pluck the gauntlet from the floor.

Piastri got closest in the final reckoning, as he'd shrugged off his own early FP2 miscue into Sainte Devote. The Australian had carried too much speed into the church-adjacent right-hander and found immediate punishment as he speared into the barrier, as he couldn't get the steering to bite and take him into the run-off. He reversed out, with only his front wing parted from his car, and received a new nose on his return to the pits. 

By the end of the session, the current points leader was within a tenth of Leclerc, and had split the two Ferraris at the top of the order. 

Ferrari quick - but "traffic paradise" could lead to big scalps in qualifying

Leclerc topped both practice sessions in what was a very messy Friday for others

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

When Yuki Tsunoda first uttered the phrase "traffic paradise" over the radio in 2021, he likely had no idea that it would enter the F1 vernacular quite so readily. Although he'd originally used it to describe Imola in his debut year, it turned out to be a phrase that lends itself wonderfully to Monaco. Even with the roads gated off and restricted to 20 cars, there's still gridlock in the afternoon...

In the event that traffic was not realistically going to levy such harsh penalties on drivers in qualifying, then FP2's order very much suggests that Ferrari - particularly Leclerc - will have the run of the place. Leclerc found himself in a fortuitous position on track relatively undisturbed by traffic, from where he could continue to circulate the track at an increasing rate of knots. 

Although Piastri's final lap was close to Leclerc's run, one should bear in mind that the McLaren driver set his time around 15 minutes after the Monegasque had posted his best tour of the session. Track evolution will account for much of Piastri's lap; at the time Leclerc crossed the line, the closest McLaren could get was just outside 0.3s.

Main Information Additional Data Driver Info Driver Info

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Main Information Additional Data 1  -  2
Cla	Driver	#		Chassis	Engine	Laps	Time	Interval	Tyres	km/h
1	C. Leclerc Ferrari	16		Ferrari	Ferrari	32	1'11.355		S	168.358
2	O. Piastri McLaren	81		McLaren	Mercedes	28	+0.038 1'11.393	0.038	S	168.268
3	L. Hamilton Ferrari	44		Ferrari	Ferrari	30	+0.105 1'11.460	0.067	S	168.110
4	L. Norris McLaren	4		McLaren	Mercedes	32	+0.322 1'11.677	0.217	S	167.601
5	L. Lawson RB	30		RB	Honda	32	+0.468 1'11.823	0.146	S	167.261
View full results

This is all quite amusing when one considers how much Ferrari has played down its chances this weekend. After Imola, Leclerc felt that there was little chance he'd achieve a podium at his home race. Even on Friday morning, deputy team principal Jerome d'Ambrosio chose to pour cold water on the embers when it was put to him that Ferrari might be in good shape.

McLaren needs to find a bit of front end to compete for pole honours on Saturday, as the MCL39 looked a bit difficult to hook up into the corners overall. Piastri contends that "the pace in the car is there", but the overnight challenge for the engineers is to unlock that

"Personally, I don't think that our core strength was actually in the low speed corners," the ex-Virgin and Lotus driver explained. "Having said that, it's always difficult because when you speak about low speed, high speed, it depends on where you put the car and that depends also on the average speed, let me say, of the high speed sections on the track.

"For example, if you have long straights, that gives you some constraints, here you have less of that, so maybe here would be a place where it would be a bit of an outlier from that perspective, but I think that in terms of our pure performance, I would say that medium, slow speed corners are not our strength. In medium speed, high speed corners, we're a bit better since the beginning of the season."

And yet, here we are with Ferrari finding a real groove around Monaco. Lewis Hamilton was not far off his team-mate either, although his one-tenth deficit was enough to fall the wrong side of Piastri's late interloping within the top three. 

Ferrari's pace came as a surprise to many at the Scuderia

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

McLaren needs to find a bit of front end to compete for pole honours on Saturday, as the MCL39 looked a bit difficult to hook up into the corners overall. Piastri contends that "the pace in the car is there", but the overnight challenge for the engineers is to unlock that. Lando Norris' assessment was that McLaren really isn't far off, and that knitting together all of the tiny details following the debriefs should augment the drivers with a little more confidence through the Monte Carlo barriers.

"We're talking small things; when you're talking about hundreds here and there, it's a lot of small things that add up," Norris reckoned. "It's difficult to get the braking right, to get the cornering right, to get the tyre grip, and the feeling all in the perfect window. I know there isn't one answer for the question there, it's many different things."

But as ever in Monaco, it's one thing to have the pace, and quite another to exploit it. Tsunoda's nightmare of a traffic paradise will confer an effect on the cut-and-thrust of the session, and so the usual plan of setting a lap, pit, and take another set and roll again likely won't be the most prudent solution. Mistakes and interruptions are expected, and so fuelling up and staying out on continuous runs through Q1 and maybe Q2 would likely offer a bit more safety - so long as a driver finds space on the circuit.

That's also why a handful of teams were doing exploratory laps on both the C6 (soft) and C5 (medium) - to assess if the C6 could keep enough life in them for a few flying laps through a qualifying session. The best direct comparison of this came at Williams; Carlos Sainz logged a 1m12.151s on the mediums, while Albon did a 1m11.918s. If you can get the lap in on softs at the first time of asking, it's arguably the quicker tyre to use. For those planning to fuel up in Q1, a medium isn't a bad shout.

Track position king, but strategy adds new dimension

The mandatory two-stop rule in place for this year's Monaco round isn't going to suddenly make the on-track action exciting, but it's going to shake up the strategies - and for those who like tactical fun, it should prove to be quite compelling.

Everyone takes on the same debt: two stops. You want to pay that debt when those stops are either at their cheapest, or when the return on investment is at its highest. In the first case, that's when virtual safety cars, full safety cars, red flags, or simply massive on-track gaps start to look rather tasty to the strategists. The teams occupying the top 10 are going to lean towards the cheaper stops, simply because they have more to lose.

Teams are mandated to make at least two pitstops per car for this year's grand prix

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

The teams lining the second half of the field are more likely to take strategic risks. If there's an opportunity for an early stop, they'll take it and hope nobody else does.

For any single car in the lower half of the field, the ideal plan would be as follows: stop on lap 1 and hope you're the only one, use the fresh air and tyres to catch the back of the pack, take the second stop when you get there, and repeat - hoping that you make up places over the course of the race.

But no single car exists in a vacuum, and the effect of the other cars on track position, race pace, and the like will individually affect when the strategists pull the 'pit in' trigger. Expect plenty of variance in approach from those in the top 10 and those lower down the order, and beware the driver with nothing to lose.

"But everything is qualifying and with two stops it's a bit like a lottery. But I believe we can be in front of the McLarens and that is what we have to do" Helmut Marko

Usually, our Friday analysis would include some kind of assessment of the race pace as seen by the end of FP2, but it's genuinely pointless to do so here - track position is still the defining factor. Ferrari and McLaren are the key tips for the top, but what of the 'other' top four teams?

Red Bull lagged some way behind its Racing Bulls sister team in FP2, although adviser Helmut Marko reckoned that a set-up change rather held back the Austrian-registered team in the second session. "We changed some stuff which wasn't bringing the results we expected," Marko told Autosport. "We got understeer, understeer here at this circuit with Verstappen - that doesn't fit together. So I hope we can recover tomorrow. Generally Ferrari seems to be really fast, and I would say they are the favourite.

"But everything is qualifying and with two stops it's a bit like a lottery. But I believe we can be in front of the McLarens and that is what we have to do."

Qualifying tends to decide the finishing order on a Sunday in Monaco

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Mercedes took something of a back seat to Racing Bulls and Williams on Friday; both VCARB cars looked dependable around Monaco as Liam Lawson was the cleaner of the two drivers; Hadjar clipped the inside barrier at the Nouvelle Chicane to bring out the first red flag after briefly stopping on track, and then hit the wall at Sainte Devote later into the session.

On both occasions, his rear-left wheel took a battering; the first time, his tyre simply came off the rim, but was left with suspension damage on the second hit and had to retreat to the pits while crabbing. 

Williams was solid amid its C5/C6 experimentation, while Aston Martin also found a way into the session with Fernando Alonso; the veteran Spaniard was well among the top 10, a position he'll want to retain into the rest of the weekend, given his points tally for the season remains conspicuously empty so far.

Who will come out on top in the very tight midfield battle?

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