Why it’s good for F1 that the Monaco-specific race rules aren’t yet finished

Something new and yet very old just happened in Formula 1: the debate about the Monaco Grand Prix’s place on the modern calendar kicked off in February in 2025, not May, as is traditional.

For at the F1 Commission meeting at London’s O2 Arena ahead of the F175 Live season launch event, the championship’s stakeholders had formally agreed to alter the rules for its long-standing blue riband event – now rather more totally safe on the calendar until 2031. Although, on that front, these days paddock sources suggest there’s a tad more sponsor shmoozing for the teams and co to be done in Miami or Las Vegas…

Perhaps this is what has spurred this action – something to instil new life in F1’s European trade show event. That and the awful 2024 race in the principality.

That contest was over after half a lap, as the pack changed tyres under the early stoppage and a snoozefest followed. Only the emotion of Charles Leclerc’s long-wanted home victory saved the spectacle.

What is now being proposed – to mandate more pitstops amid possible further rule changes we’ll get to – is very similar to what three-time Monaco winner, Lewis Hamilton, said immediately after his new team-mate’s popular home win.

“To find ways to spice it up,” the seven-time world champion mused, “maybe mandatory three stops or something?”

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner explained the following when asked about the F1 Commission’s view on that matter by Autosport: “Saturday determines everything [in Monaco]. I think last year highlighted that if you do have a stoppage and you can change your tyres at that stoppage, it's end of race, basically – it's a procession.

Running all three tyre compounds in a dry race could be a way to spice up the Monaco GP

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“So, stating that you have to run all three compounds… I think that by introducing two stops, it at least adds another dynamic. And then if it rains, you’d still have to do two stops.

“It's a little artificial, but it does add another dynamic, another possibility for Monaco to move away from [being] a very stagnant, boring race that it can often be.”

Autosport understands that the idea to address the Monaco spectacle with specific pitstop rules came from within Horner’s fellow team principal cohort in the months that followed the 2024 race. It only gathered pace recently after the FIA’s Sporting Advisory Committee (SAC) was sent to study the possible outcomes of such a change.

"The circuit's not going to change. The cars have got bigger and bigger" Christian Horner

Having done so, the team principals that make up the majority of the F1 Commission (although, not in terms of its voting power) pressed on with committing to the idea. Therefore, although it still needs official sign off from both the SAC and the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council, the overall idea is definitely coming. But the detail of how it will really work is still yet to be confirmed.

It’s worth remembering that many F1 insiders – including Horner – were calling for something more substantial to improve the Monaco race offering last year. The main thrust of this centred on trying to change the track layout, by extending its traditional 2.07-mile course to finally add an overtaking spot for the beastly modern cars.

The last time this had changed at all was back in 2016, which was when the entrance to Tabac was narrowed and moved back down the straight running from the Nouvelle chicane. This was done to avoid a repeat of the 2013 race-stopping shunt involving Pastor Maldonado and Max Chilton that’d caused a considerable run of Tecpro barrier to be dislodged that ended up blocking the track.

The 2013 Maldonado and Chilton crash triggered the most recent Monaco track changes

Photo by: Andre Vor / Sutton Images

But while the most recent idea for changing Monaco’s layout was to alter its final sector using reclaimed land, the best way of making overtaking anything near feasible would actually be to take the track left instead of right at Portier. This would create a long ‘straight’ section running away from and then leading back into the famous tunnel. This would, potentially, add two overtaking spots.

Yet Monaco’s constant construction way of life seems to thwart this – with the city having already spent much of the last decade reclaiming land in front of the very area where this track alteration might work, Larvotto.

“The circuit's not going to change,” Horner says of this idea now. “The cars have got bigger and bigger."

Inevitably, what’s being proposed is not even new – it’s essentially the precedent set by the 2023 Qatar event.

But that won’t suddenly turn Monaco into an overtaking-fest. By adding pitstops, this reduces the impact of the only artificial method of spicing up racing that has been proved to work – tyre degradation.

The cars will just run closer on the same tyre deltas and there will be little chance of the type of overtaking that did occur in 2024 – when Lance Stroll (yes, really) muscled his Aston Martin by Zhou Guanyu’s Sauber in the tunnel.

Fernando Alonso made it clear how much clout he thinks this new approach might have when he witheringly explained, on the benefit of additional pitstops, it all “depends where you start”.

Solving the processional nature of Monaco GPs is far from a straightforward issue

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“If you start in the middle,” the other Aston driver added, “you need a lot. If you start second or third, maybe you need one or two. If you start last, maybe you need 10 [or] 12…”

What this overall idea will do, however, is increase the likelihood of random events shaking up the order set by what will remain the main draw of the Monaco event: qualifying.

Think Daniel Ricciardo losing the 2016 race win in rare Red Bull pitstop shambles, Leclerc suffering the same fate in the rain with Ferrari in 2022 and Aston missing its chance of getting Alonso the 2023 win that went ultimately to Max Verstappen by botching its late-race pitstop timing.

As well as seeing if any potential loopholes will crop up in this whole shebang, the SAC is still analysing if it would be better to mandate only the softest tyre compounds could be used

Handily, Autosport understands that the full plan on how the Monaco-specific rules might work is not yet as set as the Larvotto cement.

As well as seeing if any potential loopholes will crop up in this whole shebang, the SAC is still analysing if it would be better to mandate only the softest tyre compounds could be used – an idea put forward by George Russell last year – or if teams will get a totally free choice but for all strategies to be completed over a minimum two pitstops.

The former point would combine the risks from additional pitstops with the tyre degradation factor nicely.

It’s not massive jeopardy – it just never is with motorsport’s non-safety rules. But given how the proposal just about preserves the traditional challenge of this glamourous event and injects an additional entertainment factor however small, it’s a very F1 solution to the Monaco problem.

Will the changes spice up the Monaco GP?

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images