Monaco delivered dreary race, Verstappen: "F--- me, this is so boring"

Red Bull Racing/Red Bull Content Pool

Change needed for the championship's most famous race in Monaco Grand Prix format after lackluster race?

MONACO – The Monaco Grand Prix delivered one of the most uneventful races in Formula One history. For the first time since the championship's inception in 1950, the top 10 drivers finished in the exact positions they started from.

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc finally seizing victory at his home race, a feel-good moment amidst an otherwise dreary event at arguably the most iconic race venue in the world.

The fears voiced by Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso came to fruition on Sunday. Before the weekend began, Hamilton had questioned how the media stay awake watching the Monaco Grand Prix annually.

Both Hamilton and Alonso belong to a camp of drivers who believe that while F1 needs the Monaco Grand Prix, something must be done to improve the spectacle of the championship's most famous race.

Championship leader Max Verstappen, uncharacteristically down the order in sixth place: “F--- me, this is so boring,” Verstappen vented over the radio to the Red Bull pit wall early in the race. “I should have brought my pillow!”

Verstappen had his own suggestions for change. The championship leader spent much of his race stuck behind Hamilton's Mercedes teammate George Russell, with both drivers seemingly conserving their tyres rather than pushing their cars to the limit.

Russell's radio communications were equally scathing. “At this stage, we gain nothing from driving fast,” he said to the Mercedes team, with 68 laps remaining. A rare sentiment for someone in the pinnacle of motor racing.

The narrow, winding streets of Monte Carlo combined with the ever-increasing size of F1 cars have amplified the race's reputation for monotonous processions in recent years, but this race set a new low. The situation was exacerbated by an early red flag.

On Lap 1, a collision involving Sergio Pérez, Kevin Magnussen, and Nico Hülkenberg led to the race being suspended. Due to F1's rules, teams could change tyres during the pause, meaning that every driver had already made the required tyre change when the race resumed over half an hour later.

“It was a very static race,” stated Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. “The top 10 is as it started. ... The red flag effectively killed the race because everybody just was going to run to the end.”

Further down the track, RB's Yuki Tsunoda was also decelerating, dropping back to eighth. Early in the race, three distinct groups had formed: Leclerc and the chasing trio, a mid-pack with Russell, Verstappen, and Hamilton, and the rest trailing Tsunoda.

Williams driver Alex Albon, who secured his team's first points of the season in ninth, spent the entire race stuck behind Tsunoda.

“It's annoying because he had pace, he had so much pace,” Albon said post-race. “He absolutely cleared off at the end of the race, and I was like, 'You could have done this the whole time!'”

Pressed on whether the rule regarding tyre changes during a red flag needed revisiting, Albon added, “We need to figure [something] out. Maybe a mandatory pit stop if it's a Lap 1 red flag.”

Verstappen was one of the few drivers who made a pit stop, only to find himself immediately stuck once more after catching up to Russell with fresh tyres.

The mutual frustration was apparent as Russell and Verstappen exchanged thoughts on the dull race while the latter was being interviewed by ViaPlay:

Verstappen: “I think George and I are going to go for a run now, because we didn't really have any exercise. My God! That was terrible. So boring!”

Russell: “At least a bit more interesting at the end. I was scared we were going to lose the tyres by driving so slow.”

Verstappen: “It's OK. You can't pass, so ...”

Russell: “We need to do something. They need to change something for Sunday. Mandatory pit stops, I don't know.”

Verstappen: “Like five or something!”

Russell: “Yeah, five!”

Interviewer: “Refuelling?”

Russell: “Refuel, yeah.”

Verstappen: “Mandatory nap! I don't know.”

Russell: “One lap on foot!”

Interviewer: “Toilet break?”

Verstappen: “I needed to go to the toilet, yeah. It was bad. I went, luckily, so it was all good!”

Though some suggestions bordered on humor, the premise of altering the Monaco Grand Prix format is gaining traction. Horner advocates for revisiting the race’s structure.

“It's something that we should collectively have a look at,” Horner noted. “It's not racing as such when you're just driving around three or four seconds off the pace. Monaco is such a great place to come racing, but the cars are so big now that we just need to look at, ‘Can we do something that introduces an overtaking area?’”

On social media, a statistic highlighted the issue: Formula E's race on a slightly different Monaco track saw over 200 overtakes this year, underscoring how F1’s bigger cars contribute to the problem.

Yet, there’s a prevailing belief that even dull races are tolerable if Saturday’s qualifying remains outstanding. As Yuki Tsunoda stated, “We keep the extra excitement for qualifying as everyone knows that’s a really important session ... I think this is Monaco, and this is why qualifying is extra special compared to other tracks.”

Whether Saturday’s drama is enough to offset Sunday’s procession remains to be seen.

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