A mundane Monaco? Drivers debate attempt to spice up F1’s classic race

MONTMELO, Spain (AP) — Formula 1’s hangover from a not-so-successful experiment to spice up another slow Monaco Grand Prix was still being felt in Spain this weekend.

A rule change requiring two pit stops was aimed at shaking up the Monaco GP, which offers scant chance of cars overtaking on the narrow and sinuous streets of the Mediterranean principality.

But the move didn’t produce the desired result, with most cars locked in a slow procession going well below optimum speed. Mercedes driver George Russell said he got tired of seeing Williams’ Alex Albon “driving like a grandma” when he cut a chicane and got penalized.

After finishing the race in fourth, defending F1 champion Max Verstappen quipped that even if they adopted some of the outlandish features of a popular video game, it wouldn’t change the fact that F1 cars are too wide to squeeze past one another on the street circuit.

“You can’t race here anyway so it doesn’t matter what you do. One stop, 10 stops,” Verstappen said. “We were almost doing Mario Kart. Then we have to install bits on the car – maybe you can throw bananas around? I don’t know, a slippery surface?”

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A week later the debate continued in the buildup to Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix.

“It is frustrating (for the drivers). They get out of the race, they are not even sweating,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said on Friday. “Monaco is a wonderful place to go and a brilliant event, but we need to move with the times and say, ‘Look, how can we create an overtake?’”

Monaco is Monaco

Charles Leclerc, a Monaco native and the 2024 winner of the race for Ferrari, said that he was open to thinking about ways to add some excitement to the race.

“Do we need to make every possible effort to make it better on Sunday? Definitely. But Monaco has always been ... a race when on Sunday not much is happening.”

While race day may not be super exciting, the Monaco GP remains part of the unofficial “triple crown” of motorsports with Indianapolis 500 and 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Beyond the suspense of qualifying when drivers have to push their cars to the limit through extremely tight turns, there is the glamor of the principality and its harbor packed with yachts. As Sunday’s race winner, Lando Norris dined with Prince Albert II following his victory.

Norris said in Montmelo, Spain, that while some tweaks could perhaps be made, Monaco is just Monaco.

“Monaco’s never been a race that’s been good on Sunday. Never has. Yet it’s the race everyone wants to win. It’s the one everyone looks forward to the most every single season. It’s always been like that,” Norris said.

“If you want to make a bigger event out of it, make it a more qualifying-based event. I don’t think you can really change the race, unless you make the cars half the size of what they are now.”

Not much you can do to the track

Ideas have been batted around by F1 journalists and observers that run from tweaks to the circuit to widen some corners to even more drastic rule changes to allow for points to be awarded for qualifying.

Carlos Sainz of Williams said he supported creative thinking to improve any race, but he was skeptical that Monaco could be revamped.

“I think you could still position the car in the middle of the track, go 30 kmh, and still not get overtaken,” Sainz said when asked about shaving off some edges of the course.

And then there was Fernando Alonso who, as the grid’s senior driver at age 43, said that moping about Monaco – while also loving it – is just a part of F1 tradition.

“You see one overtake every 10 years. So great, you know? I mean, this has been the Monaco nature,” Alonso said.

“(But) don’t worry, because next year we will go to Monaco and on Wednesday we will be so excited,” he said. “And then on Saturday we are all super excited, and the adrenaline that you get on those laps is probably unique in the championship. And then for whatever reason, on Sunday we will be all disappointed once again.”

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing