I’ve spent the whole week thinking about what was actually interesting about Monaco and any honest Monaco 2026 analysis has to start with a caveat. The data, telemetry included, is flawed by the nature of the track: the results are a tangle of qualifying performance, penalties, a safety car restart and a red flag. Which is quite aligned with the disruption race article and midfield points from last week, link to it here.
The means we cannot say anything general about the performance of the teams. So instead of a main theme of the article, I think I will just highlight a few points from the race, which were painfully true, but also exciting.
Antonelli and the drivers championship
Antonelli did something, which was quite remarkable. He got the faster car, better traction out of corners and greater highspeed. However you need something else in Monaco, you need confidence and trust in the car at the same time as you have a 7th world champion right behind you. Antonelli showed this weekend he could be something special for the sport to come. He did two starts perfectly, fending off first Verstappen, then Hamilton. It is about the mindset when you know the season have been full of bad starts and now you have a 4th time world champion behind you, and you are about to do the start of maybe your life. You succeed, do it again but with a 7th time world champion behind you.
He is locked in, and he is able to stay cold in focused racing scenario like Monaco where a single mistake is punished quite harshly, at the same time he was gaining 0.4 a second on Hamilton over the course of the race in a fuel adjusted pace metric (raw pace metric), with a clean air assumption. Furthermore he was 0.6 seconds faster than his teammate, George Russel, in clean air.
Talking about Russel, he is now in 3rd place and quite behind. The season is still quite young, however as weekends go by the tightier it will become for Russel. Russel loved the car in Australia and China, but now it is not fit for his driving style. Russel is on the backfoot and Barcelona can be a deciding factor if he is able to get a step ahead. He has indicated he has been looking forward to the European traditional racetracks. If he is not able to show any performance closer to Antonelli he can be forced to surrender to reality. No points in Canada and no Points in Monaco, that is a 50 point gap in two races. If Antonelli is able to create a gap of 84 points after the Belgium GP, then in a scenario of a two horse race Antonelli only has to beat Russel one time more and then he can just drift behind Russel for the remaining races and still stay ahead and win the drivers championship. If it becomes a two horse race, Russel has to pick up points on Kimi now or hope the other top teams are able to challenge them in the front in race pace. Antonelli has the upper hand, Russel on the backfoot.
Clean Air pace of the Audi
What surprised us after the Monaco race was the fuel adjusted race pace in clean air for the drivers, and what stood out was Audi. On saturday in qualifying they were favorites among the midfield to score high, however neither drivers were able to really put it all together and had to start in the middle of the grid. In the race they showed why they were favorites, BOR showed great stable pace as soon as he got into clean air, catching up on the rest of the field. When he got into clean air in the second stint he almost matched Antonelli’s pace for a few laps before catching up to another car. This shows aerodynamic performance or traction from a car which up until now has had the highest topspeed almost every weekend. I be looking at Audi going into Singapore. Furthermore if we look at the box chart below a smaller box indicates more stable laptimes, meaning consistency from the driver. Consistency is key for drivers as it makes it able to predict laptimes, tyredegradation etc. which makes it easier for the pit team to maintain or develop race strategies live in the race.
How points should have been split based on qualifying
7 DNF’s Verstappen, Leclerc, Norris, Stroll, Sainz, Bearman and Bottas. Three due to on track collisions with cars or walls, four due to car issues. Furthermore penalties were given left and right, and a drive through to Russel in the end could have been a DNF as well. Monaco delivered on what we last case called a disruptive race, giving midfield disruptive points which can be crucial for the championship in the constructors. Please go read the article, link here, to get a better understanding of what this means.
If we compare the actual race results, with what would each team have gained in a classic Monaco race scenario in an ideal world. Luckily Monaco in that regard can be quite boring and thus more easy, but if we use the qualifying as expected points, we can create the following diagram.
Clear winners of the disruption was Alpine and Racing Bulls, they both got an extra 13 points compared to what their qualifying position would have given them. Racing Bulls was about to get 17 points, but due to Alpine convincing FIA to overrule their time penalty decision to Gasly, he got the penalty reverted. It will be one more controversial podium in the history of F1, dividing the fanbase. Alpine is not 19 points behind Redbull and 15 points ahead of Racing Bulls.
Furthermore Williams and Haas got 4 and 2 points, creating more space to Audi in the constructors. Lastly Aston Martin got a single point, due to Perez also picking up a time penalty putting him behind Alonso. I am not sure Aston Martin and Cadillac with the current performance of the car will have another go for points this season, thus this single point to Aston Martin could be deciding on P10.
Biggest losers are Redbull, they had Verstappen on the front row, but failing the start and reporting engine issues afterwards meant a DNF. The same goes for Ferrari, Leclerc under the safetycar binged his car just before the straight and had to DNF, 9 points lost for ferrari. Lastly Mercedes had a drive through penalty to Russel, losing him his opportunity for points, 8 point lost.
Going into Barcelona
Monaco is done, we can move on to races which can give us even better insight and better racing, today (friday) Barcelona begins. A classic racing track, with a great mix of slow, fast and long corners. High tyre temperatures, and high degredation is the name of the game. What I will have my eye on is, how Russel will be performing when the traditionel circuts are comming his way. Furthermore FP2 test strategies, as well as degredation curves, which car is the true tyre whisperer this year. At last who gained most from new upgrades in Barcelina, did they make a difference?
If you made it this far, again, thanks for reading.
Have a great race weekend.