McLaren driver Lando Norris of Britain, left, celebrates on the podium with Zak Brown, McLaren chief, centre, and McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia after winning the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix race at the Monaco racetrack in Monaco, Sunday, May 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

The principality of Monaco is roughly 0.8 square miles in size, similar to Central Park in New York City, and boasts a total population of around 39,000 residents. This hardly seems the place for a Formula 1 (F1) race, but the tax haven nature (over 30% of its citizens are millionaires) means the glitz and glamour of the event keep it a focal point of the F1 calendar.

Growing up, my dad is the person who introduced me to F1 and his love of the sport intrigued me as well. We didn’t cheer for the same drivers very often, but we shared an enjoyment of racing, along with my mom. It remains a conversational centerpiece for us to this day. Monaco is a race we’ve always seen differently as neither of my parents enjoy it, but I find something still interesting about it.

I watch the cars zip around the tight and winding streets of Monte Carlo, the largest administrative ward in Monaco, and am constantly amazed that they can do so without hitting the barriers that are always looming along the sides of the road. At other dedicated race tracks, there are run off areas, gravel pits, and wide swaths of grass that meet drivers who drive too deep into corners. However, at Monaco, it is just a metal railing punishing anyone who goes off the racing line.

Qualifying is a spectacle to behold. The drivers constantly one up each other, driving faster and faster around this street circuit, disaster always seems to be looming. This year, very few drivers wrecked their cars in qualifying and the whole session was electric.

However, the races in Monaco are the very definition of processional. Generally speaking, this race is the most formulaic one on the calendar as very little passing happens on track because of the narrow streets and tight corners. Usually, whoever gets pole keeps the lead into the first corner and will end up winning the race baring some sort of intervention (safety cars, weather, pit stop mishaps).

The lack of racing and utter frustration drivers experience at not being able to pass one another makes it seem antithetical to racing. However, it is one of the most prized race wins out of the whole F1 calendar and someplace most drivers are desperately wanting to win.

This odd dichotomy continues as this track has the most laps of any race on the calendar, but is the shortest total race distance. A waiver is granted to the Monaco race because the total race distance is under the mandatory distance set by the governing body of the sport. Still, this is one of the longest races in actual race time!

Why? Because the tactic to racing in Monaco is not to go as fast as possible, but often to go as slow as possible. To combat this tendency, Pirelli introduced a new soft tire (which was first used in Imola last weekend) to the track which they hoped would degrade more than previous tires. The governing body dictated that this race would have two mandatory pitstops instead of just one like all the other races.

This was put in place in the hopes it would diversify strategy for the teams. In previous Monaco races, drivers in the back would go in for their one mandatory pitstop on the first lap of the race, and drive the rest of the race on hard tires that could last around the Monaco circuit. Many thought the new two mandatory stops meant drivers would just come in on the first two laps instead of just one, and still employ the same strategy.

That actually didn’t happen. Still, the dictate didn’t really change the race how anyone really hoped it would. This Monaco race was much weirder to watch than any other I can remember.

Racing Bulls, the junior team of Red Bull, have had two pretty strong cars throughout the season, and they qualified really well in Monaco. Rookie driver Isack Hadjar qualified in sixth (later bumped to fifth after a penalty for Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton) and his teammate Liam Lawson qualified in ninth.

The top eight drivers sped off after the start of the race, but Lawson all but crawled around the track. His lap times were anywhere from five to eight seconds slower than the drivers at the front of the field. Why would he drive so slow? Lawson was holding everyone behind him back so that Hadjar could get in for a pit stop and come back out in eighth place instead of losing even more positions.

Drivers behind Lawson were frustrated with his slow pace, but were even more frustrated when Lawson still kept up the slow pace even after Hadjar’s pit stop. Turns out, Lawson was playing the team game for not just one, but both of Hadjar’s pit stops.

The Racing Bulls team was willing to sacrifice Lawson’s race, as he would come out behind all of those cars he was holding up after he finally takes a pit stop, in order for Hadjar to have the best possible position. This also benefited Fernando Alonso with Aston Martin, Hamilton in his Ferrari, and Esteban Ocon with Haas as they were all ahead of Lawson.

Interestingly, Lawson ended up not suffering any ill side effects of this strategy because the Williams team of Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz, both behind Lawson, decided to employ the exact same strategy. Sainz backed up all the cars behind him to give Albon two pit stops without losing any positions.

George Russell, a Mercedes driver, was stuck behind Sainz’s Williams and was fuming about the slow pace. He came on the radio several times, saying Sainz was driving “dangerously slow” around the track. After Albon’s second pitstop, he slowed on track to let Sainz past, and then played the blocker so that Sainz could now have two pitstops without losing position.

Russell was animatedly distressed at this point. He ended up cutting a chicane (an “s” shaped kink in the road that forces drivers to slow down to maneuver) and was ahead of Albon’s Williams, a move that isn’t allowed in the regulations as he left the track and gained an advantage. Russell came on the radio and said he’d had enough and would just take the penalty.

The stewards didn’t appreciate that idea at all and gave Russell a drive through penalty, meaning he had to drive through the pits but was unable to stop and get his car serviced. In effect, Russell now had three pitstops to everyone else’s two, effectively ending his race.

Overall, the racing seemed as frustrating for the drivers as it was tedious for the viewers. All racing, but particularly F1, is supposed to be about speed. These are the pinnacle of race cars, so watching them drive around well below the speeds they’re capable of in order to allow a free pitstop for their teammate just isn’t very exciting.

The mandatory two pitstops simply exacerbated this situation, making the race feel even longer and even less interesting as the frustrations of no passing built up both for drivers and for viewers. Something might need to change in Monaco, but it wasn’t the number of pitstops or the softer tires.

Out front, however, the drivers were keeping a much faster pace and keeping things slightly more interesting. After the frontrunners had done two pitstops, Max Verstappen found himself in the lead but with one pitstop still to make. He had no incentive to take it though as he had plenty of room before Hamilton’s Ferrari in fifth, so Verstappen just kept the lead until the penultimate lap, hoping an intervention would come to let him retain the lead.

Nothing panned out for Verstappen, however, and Lando Norris of McLaren, the pole sitter for the race, went on to win it. Hometown hero Charles Leclerc (who actually grew up in Monaco), followed him very closely with his Ferrari in second place, and Norris’ teammate Oscar Piastri brough his McLaren home in third place.

Piastri retained his lead in the driver’s championship, but it shrank down to just three points over Norris. Verstappen fell a little further behind, now lagging by 25 points. Despite the lackluster nature of the Monaco race, the championship is still enticingly close.

Spain is the final stop of the European triple-header with the feature race taking place on Sunday, June 1, at 9 a.m. Eastern Time.