2025 Monaco Grand Prix - [POST RACE] discussion thread 🏁

[wes@lemmy.world]

ROUND 8: Monaco

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FORMULA 1 TAG HEUER GRAND PRIX DE MONACO 2025

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Circuit stats

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• First Grand Prix: 1950
• Number of laps: 78
• Circuit Length: 3.337 km
• Race Distance: 260.286 km
• Lap record: 1:12.909 Lewis Hamilton (2021)
• 2024 winner: Charles Leclerc

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Track Map

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[tauren@lemm.ee]

Two mandatory pit-stops are about to make this race interesting any second now.

[stokholm@lemm.ee]

Something substancial has to be done about the Monaco race. Pitstops are not fixing the issues. As it is, it's completely idiotic.

[coelacanth@feddit.nu]

I normally do a race summary but in truth I don't think there is enough material today to spew out my customary wall of text. The forced two-stop shook things up as well as it could - which is to say "not a lot", as the track still limits what is physically possible.

There were some moments of strategy and some moments of "Monaco". Ferrari's pitwall actually were on it again, which is nice to see. Hamilton overcutting and gaining two positions ended up being one of the only moments of "action" the whole race. As usual around here the overcut is where you want to be, not the undercut. As demonstrated succinctly by Aston and Alonso, though it wouldn't have mattered in the end what with his engine giving out. This man must have been cursed because the amount of bad luck he's getting is something else.

Mercedes has to be singled out for strategy as well, as their no fucks given approach had me scratching my head. Maybe they were just so off the pace they didn't even bother, but I have legitimately no idea what they were attempting to do this race.

Racing Bulls and Williams backing up the field with one car to give the other a free pitstop ended up being the best way to deal with the race, which is sort of farcical yes. I do wonder why more teams didn't attempt it?

Always hard to pick a driver of the day at Monaco, in my opinion. I would have been tempted to give it to Bortoleto for his overtake at the hairpin if he didn't follow it up by going into the wall. Antonelli also performed an actual overtake to take the position back, but it of course was aided by the overtakée hitting the wall.

Hadjar had a great finish, but it was delivered by his qualy and his teammates assistance giving him free pitstops. He didn't put a foot wrong, I suppose.

Did anyone really impress this race?

EDIT: God damn I talk a lot, I managed a wall of text after all!

[neverbeaten@lemmy.world]

I’m convinced that there’s nothing that can redeem it. The only reason it’s still on the calendar is that the teams and FOM love going to Monaco (and all the oligarchs that are VIPs). It’s a terrible race parade and has been for many decades. They’ve tried so many things to spice it up and they’ve all failed miserably. Bottom line: it’s a week long party around the most boring F1 parade of the year.

The two pit stops “made it so unpredictable” according to people before the race, but how different was the finishing order from qualifying? It just made RB and Williams run 5-10 seconds off the pace for most of the parade. Epic fail.

My best idea to make it fun to watch is to put all the drivers in go karts. Don’t even bring F1 cars. They’re too big to facilitate any kind of overtaking. Instead of armco barriers, straw bales. But then it wouldn’t be F1 (just the drivers).

Make this the last Monaco race. I beg that every year. The only way to fix it is to take it off the calendar. Go back to Portugal, instead. That was a fun race to watch.

[urquell@lemm.ee]

In contrary to most here, I found the race quite interesting

[frostytrichs@crazypeople.online]

Happy to see Lando get the win after a strong weekend. I hope this McLaren battle for WDC stays close all season.

[jhex@lemmy.world]

A race where cars cannot pass each other is called a parade

Monaco should be a specialty race, maybe a clock race of 20 laps with only 5 cars on the track or so

[danitos@reddthat.com]

Same here, but I must confess I can hardly call it a race. It's not that people can't overtake, is that they used this to just play around.

When I think of racing, the last thing I think about is people going intentionally slow all race long to do shenanigans because they can't be overtaken.

Compare that to this Mansell vs Senna Monaco 1992 final laps. Despite not being able to overtake with huge tyre advantage, they are racing.

[thiccsempertyrannis@lemmy.world]

Really enjoyed watching Max's full pit stop and pit out when it was the last lap with 1-3 on top of each other. Not that there was much risk of anything changing, but still. Come on.

Mercedes pit strategy goated btw

[hal_5700x@sh.itjust.works]

New arbitrary rule, same boring Monaco race.

Did Mercedes had a strategy?

The Racing Bulls and Williams did a great job.

[blackn1ght@feddit.uk]

How does Lewis' race engineer still have his job? He's awful.

[oxideseven@lemmy.ca]

They keep it for the history, so bring it some historical cars. Make an event of it. Make it so the track has a track day 2 other times a year with cars the public can rent out and compare track times. Don't even have a race just do quali time trials and that's it.

[chanchomanco@lemm.ee]

Just one more pit stop bro!
One more pit stop will fix it, I swear.

[mysticpickle@lemmy.ca]

"We are checking."

[microw@lemm.ee]

Monaco historic GP is already a thing, and for obvious reasons can not be included in the world championship

[smeg@feddit.uk]

According to Russell their plan was the same as Williams and RB, they were just beaten to it!

[no_ones_slick_like_gaston@lemmy.world]

How about we also add one more lane to the whole circuit. That would solve the problem, I'm sure.

[bytejunk@lemmy.world]

I really disliked it. If we're racing all at the same time to a finish line, then overtakes HAVE to happen. Monaco as a traditional F1 GP is dead.

The pit shenanigans are not what I watch F1 for. It's like the pinch of salt on the steak, brings out flavour, but salt isn't meat and you can't replace one with the other.

Max staying out in #1 just waiting for that flag to come was ridiculous, IMO. Even worse trying to back up Norris into Leclerc. People will disagree, and defend that it's a valid strategy, and it is, but it's also goddamn embarrassment. I'm sure everyone was looking at Tsunoda like hawks to see if he'd pull a "Nelson Piquet". That's just the kind of bullshit that NASCAR would pull off, and there's a reason they're dying: race integrity is a goddam farce if you don't slap down all this nonsense.

We're here to see the best pilots in the world pushing blazing fast, state of the art cars, to their absolute limit and beyond.

Instead, what we got was a clown show of a parade, with people intentionally driving slowly to create room for pits and whatnot. How absolutely disgraceful.

Can Monaco be saved? Maybe. The quali was thrilling to watch, so maybe FIA can come up with some sort of special event, with Championship points on the line, but where you try to set a better lap than other racers, like with brackets and if you win you race against (but depart several seconds behind) another winner, and losers Vs losers, until you end up with the top 2 winners fighting it out. I dunno, just a thought.