Lewis Hamilton said today’s Monaco Grand Prix was one of the least exciting races he’s ever participated in.
The seven-times world champion started and finished the race in seventh position. An early red flag allowed most of the field to make their mandatory tyre change after one lap, meaning most of the field opted not to pit for the rest of the race.Unlike many drivers, Hamilton made a live pit stop in the race, which gave him the opportunity to score the bonus point for fastest lap. Even so, he was scathing about the lack of competition.
“Because of the crash, everyone switched over to the other tyre and just managed at a really slow pace,” he told the official Formula 1 channel. “So definitely the one of the dullest races I think I’ve been in. But that’s Monaco for you. ”
The team’s trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin admitted the early appearance of the red flag was not helpful for their strategy. As both drivers had started on the hard tyres, they had to switch to the medium compound for the rest of the race. Hamilton appeared to have raised concerns over this strategy, telling the team “I told you so” as he entered the pits when the red flag appeared.
Shovlin said the strategy had “pros and cons” as “a red flag or Safety Car intervention after the front four had stopped would have provided an opportunity to get both cars on the podium.
“However, a lap one red flag would prove awkward. This is exactly what befell us as the race got underway. We were therefore in a situation where we had to try and get to the end on the medium tyre.”
“Most cars were doing a fair bit of management, so this was relatively easy to handle in the end,” he said. “George [Russell] seemed to have good pace in the closing stages and was able to defend well against Max [Verstappen] and it was encouraging to see the improvements we made in our long run since Friday. The stop with Lewis towards the end wasn’t necessary from a tyre point of view, but it did give us an opportunity to take an extra point for fastest lap.”
Mercedes admitted they did not communicate correctly with Hamilton around his pit stop, the result being he didn’t push as hard as he could have done, which allowed Max Verstappen ahead of him to make a pit stop and put pressure on George Russell. However the Red Bull driver was unable to find a way past.
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Coventry Climax
26th May 2024, 21:44
Couldn’t agree more, with it being the dullest race in over .. whatever time.
But what do you expect, from a team that, in the early stages already, says to the 5th place car that there’s nothing to be gained from going any faster?
If that’s what FiA, FOM, Liberty and whomever think F1 should be about, they’ve got to thnk again.
There’s someone else I couldn’t agree with more: B.B. King telling us The thrill is gone.
While I’d stay awake during a B.B. King concert, I fell asleep twice during this race.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
26th May 2024, 23:12
LeClerc winning was what Liberty wanted. Its about idols and narratives these days, and when ever possible, the Stewards will create a 10 second VSC to change the race results to make headlines. Don’t forget to thank Pirelli for sharing their poor compounds with RBR so everyone else can keep up.
MichaelN
26th May 2024, 23:48
The tyres Pirelli brings to the track are assigned to specific drivers by the FIA Technical Delegate. Pirelli has no say in who uses which of their tyres.
Mayrton
27th May 2024, 8:59
Sainz dodging penalty and being reinstated 3rd felt kind of … well, it could be coincidence but nobody objected this weekend to see Leclerc win. Shareholder value first!
Pinak Ghosh (@pinakghosh)
27th May 2024, 14:29
Agree. F1 is now more about narratives and not entirely about competition. Monaco would be a good DTS episode, just not a good race.
DaveW (@dmw)
27th May 2024, 14:19
This is one track and a special case. It’s always been this way at Monaco. It’s qualifying and hoping for chaos or rain on Sunday. There are processional races at normal tracks also. As for people hyping up Indy remember that your last lap thrills are preceded by hours of numbing tire and fuel management while the cars go round and round.
Ben-Hur (@ben-hur)
26th May 2024, 22:20
However by midrace I thought you were in a position to go for a podium, even for a win. You had built a huge gap ahead of Yuki, plenty enough for a free pitstop. Nobody else had a position like that. Lando built a gap ahead of George just enough for a free pitstop under VSC conditions but not in normal racing conditions.
I fully expected that before the end of the race the tyres of all the guys ahead would give up and then you’d have your chance. But somehow all made it to the end. How could George’s softs survive the whole race including the late charge by Max?
The fact that everybody had already changed tyres during the red flag period combined with the unexpected tyre resilience made for a really dull endrace, as all the dram and strategies of pitting for fresh tyres were absent.
Maybe the Merc wall knew (or at least expected, that nobody ahead of you would need to pit). It is the only explanation I can find for the fact that they did not make use of your position
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
27th May 2024, 15:33
You’re confusing russell’s tyres, he had mediums, not softs, I’m guessing he indeed wouldn’t have survived on softs for that long, but mediums seemed just fine and remember he went very slow early on and preserved them.
Kribana (@krichelle)
26th May 2024, 23:05
This one was the most boring over the last few years. 2018 was similar because the laptimes were ridiculously slow and the tyres were so weird that day.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th May 2024, 23:20
2018 had more intrigue because of ricciardo’s power unit problem, in fact ricciardo going slowly was the reason the cars further back were going faster than the ones in front.
Anthony H. Tellier
28th May 2024, 16:14
Good point on 2018 .. field couldn’t even reel in a sick “Rici”.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
26th May 2024, 23:21
the tires were too weak to even think about overtaking. These heavy cars are useless around street circuits like Monaco, fitted with tires that grease up at the slightest wince.
Dog
28th May 2024, 15:26
Honestly one of the drivers behind should have threatened on the radio that they’ll go for a lunge if the car ahead doesn’t actually start racing. There was no race not sure why they did a podium ceremony
Mr Squiggle
26th May 2024, 23:18
The F1 cars are just too big for Monaco. I switched of about lap 40
I watched the F3 and F2 races, they were much more interesting. Its not the tracks fault
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th May 2024, 23:22
Yes, we just have to go back 10-20 years to find more interesting races with easier passes in f1, it’s indeed the cars’ length that increased a lot in recent years.
Who is this little man
27th May 2024, 2:52
Bring back the tyre cliff. No idea why people complained about it, about the only entertaining part of F1 since about 1992
PeterG
27th May 2024, 13:36
@Who is this little man people complained about the tyre cliff because it was awful and did nothing but turn all the races into a game of driving slowly due to needing to do extreme levels of tyre management.
additionally watching cars hit the tyre cliff and lose seconds a lap just wasn’t fun and didn’t lead to exciting racing because while it was creating a ton of passing none of it was competitive because the cars on older tyres had nothing to fight back with. it was a terrible thing from a racing perspective!
fans want to see competitive racing with good battles & some proper exciting overtakes. the high degredation era with the extreme tyre cliff nonsense didn’t provide us with that. it was nothing but quantity over quality which is why the tyre cliff nonsense isn’t fondly remembered and was something a vast majority of fans were glad to see the back of.
anon
27th May 2024, 5:30
@esploratore1 not really – people tend to idealise the past because they remember the bits that they think were good, but forget the races that were boring (as, by their nature, people don’t want to remember those races).
There have been figures compiling overtaking statistics for Monaco all the way back to 1975, and even all the way back to then, you could have some pretty dull races with relatively few overtakes – which matches the contemporary articles also commenting about how Monaco was processional.
After all, just take this quote – “With wide cars on a narrow circuit and a remarkable equality among the drivers and cars a race must of necessity become a procession, with everyone waiting for the others to make a mistake or have trouble.”. That sounds extremely similar to the sort of complaints being made today about contemporary cars at the Monaco circuit – except that complaint actually comes from a write up of the 1977 Monaco Grand Prix.
Even getting on for nearly 50 years ago now, people were describing the Monaco circuit as anachronistic and that the contemporary cars of the time were too wide for there to be decent racing.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
27th May 2024, 15:39
Wow, that’s indeed really similar to what people we say nowadays about monaco, interesting they said something like that back then already. Ofc there have been boring races at monaco, just like at other tracks, it just seems like until a few years ago people could overtake reasonably, like verstappen in 2018, he started from the back and recovered till the points, while in this particular race nothing happened in terms of overtakes, aside from the last 4 cars, all outside the points.
MichaelN
26th May 2024, 23:55
It’s a bit of both; even in the late 1990s when the cars became significantly smaller, Monaco was still infamous for the same reason it is now. The Coulthard-Bernoldi comedy hour was in 2001, after all.
It’s also easier to have the speed differences needed for overtaking when the cars, drivers, and teams aren’t as optimized, error free, experienced and skilled as in F1. That basically leaves tyre compounds as one of the last ways to create that difference.
Mark Zastrow (@markzastrow)
27th May 2024, 4:13
Unfortunately, Pirelli are somewhat restricted by the rules in providing tyres that would produce intrigue at Monaco. If the goal is to produce falloff that necessitates pit stops, it makes little sense that one of the allowable compounds should be capable of going the entire race distance. The hard shouldn’t even have been an option at this race. Mandatory stints on the medium and soft would have been much more interesting.
Johns
27th May 2024, 6:04
The “hard” tires this race were the C4’s I believe. Hardly a “hard” tire on a normal track.
Jere (@jerejj)
27th May 2024, 7:32
Mr Squiggle Size has always been indifferent in Monaco.
ASd
27th May 2024, 8:19
They are not to big for Monaco. People should stop repeating that mantra.
Modern cars have stupidly short breaking distances. Those distances might extend enough for an overtake when doing 310kmh on a straight, but when braking from a lower speed like 170kmh the breaking distance is 10 metres – so it’s impossible to gain the length of the car on braking no matter what that length is.
Fer no.65
27th May 2024, 10:00
It’s not just a size problem, but a speed one. The cars are way too fast, and stop way too quickly. In lower formulas, it takes more time to do everything which gives drivers (who are also less experienced and prone to more errors) more chances.
Tristan
27th May 2024, 0:42
The track is the track and the cars are the cars, neither are really immediately changeable.
What is changeable is the red-flag tyre rule, I never understood it anyway, makes sense if there’s changeable conditions but it was always a suspicious precedent back when drivers started using safety as a reason to change their tyres in a red flag anyway, it’s just a free advantage for those on old tyres and as we saw today, kills the strategy.
At least then the race would have had the strategy element, the only thing going for it in hindsight.
Who is this little man
27th May 2024, 2:53
My question is simply why was the tyre cliff removed? The cars shouldn’t be able to do more than like 40% of the race on any type of tyre.
Tristan
27th May 2024, 5:45
That’s a funny comment, nobody wanted or appreciated racing with tyres that just fall of a cliff.
Skett
27th May 2024, 9:25
I understand that sometimes the tyres will need changing due to running over debris or something. I think that they should be handed an extra set of whatever compound tyres they were on and they can use that or (if required) can change to wets (or back to dries if drying).
AlanD
27th May 2024, 17:20
Skett, I don’t think they could do that because of the cost. Pirelli would need to bring four extra tyres per car in each compound, just in case there was a red flag, and double that if they wanted to cover the possibility of two red flags. Those are big expensive tyres, around $2500 each I believe, so you’d be talking about half a million bucks worth of tyres being shipped around from race to race.
Johns
27th May 2024, 6:01
Make Monaco a go kart race. All the drivers run carts like in their youth.
Or make it a vintage race with 1990 era F1 cars. I would love to hear a screaming V12 again at Monaco.
Tristan
27th May 2024, 6:13
Check out the historic grand prix of monaco event for that, really cool stuff!
Jere (@jerejj)
27th May 2024, 6:47
Perhaps a time trial format would be good for Monaco instead of doing actual racing or only the minimum lap amount for 100 km, like in sprints, but with the mandatory pit stop.
Mayrton
27th May 2024, 6:55
Hand down the most boring race I have seen in decades.
Jere (@jerejj)
27th May 2024, 7:33
For me, the inaugural Abu Dhabi GP, for example, was definitely worse & I’m sure several others as well.
Mayrton
27th May 2024, 9:03
That race makes the top 5 as well, I agree.
AlanD
27th May 2024, 17:25
I think the first few Bahrain GPs set new standards for boredom too.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
27th May 2024, 9:33
There is nothing wrong with Monaco as a race circuit.
It used to be fun, it could be fun again.
The problem is that the F1 cars of today do not work well there for various reasons.
If the cars don’t radically alter soon, (and I can not see that happening) then we must either create a totally different format to suit the circuit or stop racing there.
I love the history associated with Monaco, so would definitely vote for something like two days of point scoring Qualifying sessions followed by a sprint race on the Sunday?
Fer no.65
27th May 2024, 10:11
I can’t believe Merecedes didn’t tell Hamilton he needed to push like mad. Even if he had damaged the tyres on the out lap (that was their concern) he’d have gained track position that he had no way of losing. And even if he did, he’d have been back to where he was, losing nothing out of it.
Baffling. They made a half move of the ages, at a race so dull.
Dex
27th May 2024, 10:42
In football it’s illegal to avoid scoring a goal (such a game should be investigated as fixed), but in F1 it’s legal to drive unnecessary slow. It’s a very tricky ground, but oerhaps it should be regulated, at least somehow, for ethical reasons if nothing else. Just make it illegal at least, so it can’t be considered a legitimate strategy (which it is at the moment).
As far as I understand, in theory it’s illegal to drive dangerously slow. Extend that a little bit, just so we can at least point fingers at drivers who do this (now I can’t even do that, what they do makes perfect sense). There is a point at which things become ridiculous, and we often cross it in Monaco.
But what made this race terrible is the stupid rule that allowed them to change already new tires under RF and avoid pitting. That shouldn’t be allowed after less than a lap of racing (or at least it shouldn’t count as a pit stop). Monaco without pit stops is just… reduced to nothing. I love Monaco, but Monaco without strategic battles? This was the worst (full) race I’ve seen.
Dex
27th May 2024, 10:42
And sorry, I didn’t mean to click on reply.
Anthony H. Tellier
28th May 2024, 16:20
Kept it on just in case:
a) LeClerc’s red car destructed
b) Lappees got n the way.
That’s it.
Zzzzzzzzzzz …
Paul Spencer
27th May 2024, 11:06
I think F1 should really consider (particularly in races like this) mandating the use of ALL THREE compounds during the race. This would introduce more strategy and potentially different tyre offsets and avoid mistakes like yesterdays “race”. It may not lead to ontrack overtakes in Monaco, but would atleast encourage an overcut / undercut opportunity, even if it means they dive in with 3 laps to go to put on a particular compound, so be it, atleast there is some jepardy in doing the stop.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
27th May 2024, 15:47
Yes, this is a good idea, I remember a recent race where pirelli had tyre issues (strange for such a good supplier!) and they mandated 3 pit stops, if I recall, however they could pick the tyres they wanted, I think forcing them to use hard, mediums and softs in the order they prefer would be a good strategic element, especially in monaco or singapore, places where track position is king.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
27th May 2024, 15:48
Oh, and a problem with that race is that I think they were allowed run for max 20 laps per stint.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
27th May 2024, 15:48
allowd to run*
Simon
27th May 2024, 15:59
One of the dullest races Hamilton’s been in, one of the dullest I’ve watched.
Leclerc’s win the only saving grace
rsp123 (@rsp123)
27th May 2024, 19:58
Make the cars much narrower – 1.6m max. Also, allow much more inventiveness between teams, which will make some cars much faster than others – at least at certain tracks. As for keeping the cornering speeds down, this can be solved by restricting the fuel cars can use, and lowering that amount each year.