Ted Kravitz left in disbelief at how poor £1.5m-a-year F1 driver’s strategy was at the Monaco Grand Prix

It became clear during the early stages of the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix that one driver was the cut-off point for whether you were going to have a successful race or a frustrating one.

Liam Lawson and Racing Bulls came up with a cunning plan to make sure that Isack Hadjar scored the maximum points possible.

The New Zealander drove as slowly as he could without being overtaken by Alex Albon and the cars behind him to allow Hadjar to make his mandatory two stops during the race as quickly as possible.

Fernando Alonso retired from the race but would have benefited from the strategy and it helped Esteban Ocon score six precious points for Haas after Oliver Bearman started from the back of the grid.

However, those who were stuck behind Lawson lap after lap mindlessly following the Racing Bulls driver were getting progressively more annoyed until he finally yielded, only for Williams to use the same trick with Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz.

Sainz was frustrated on the team radio by the tactics implemented during the Monaco Grand Prix, but it could have been a lot worse.

Both Mercedes drivers had races to forget and Red Bull’s second driver Yuki Tsunoda was left to rue his poor qualifying performance on Sunday.

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Ted Kravitz shares what exactly went wrong for Red Bull driver Yuki Tsunoda at the Monaco Grand Prix

Kravitz was covering the final laps of the race for Sky Sports F1 (25/5 3:33 pm) from the Monaco pit lane and explained: “The three evils that will ruin your race, one, useful teammates, two, traffic behind slower cars and the third one was a red flag.

“No one’s been affected by a red flag yet, if it does happen, it’ll win Max the race.

“Traffic behind slower cars, Yuki Tsunoda, remember him, really affected by traffic.

“That early stop behind the slower cars, and I don’t think he’s made his second stop yet Yuki, has he? I don’t think he has, so that’s really affected him.

“Victims of the useful teammates, well, Mercedes again, and Williams although they turned that to their advantage although Racing Bulls really aced it with the old useful teammates.”

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Yuki Tsunoda laments another ‘frustrating’ F1 weekend since his Red Bull promotion

Tsunoda was speaking in his official post-race press conference and highlighted his own failures in qualifying as the reason for his poor showing in Monaco.

He explained: “It has been a frustrating weekend for me overall but there was nothing I could do much differently today, it’s down to me to be qualifying better.

“For sure I didn’t help myself yesterday and I didn’t help my team. If you qualify that far behind, you can’t expect much to happen in your race here and you have created that situation.

“Not much happened in my race apart from Pierre crashing into me. I was stuck in a lot of traffic and it felt like the longest race ever.

“Monaco is not fun when you are just sitting or driving by yourself, you can’t create your rhythm when you are stuck behind people.

“I don’t feel like Monaco was too affected by the limitations to my car from Imola, the pace was alright and it felt good in FP3 and in qualifying during Q1, I just wasn’t able to put it together overall. Hopefully next weekend I can put it all together and I need to do better overall.”

Red Bull facing uncomfortable second driver stat after the Monaco Grand Prix

Tsunoda, who is on a £1.5m-a-year Red Bull contract, has scored 10 points this season, although only seven of those have come since joining Christian Horner’s team.

The Japanese driver took over from Lawson who failed to score a point during his two-race stint with Red Bull but has finally got off the mark in Monaco to help Racing Bulls leapfrog Aston Martin in the constructors’ championship.

However, a third of the way through the season, Isack Hadjar has just entered the top 10 of the drivers’ championship after the strongest performance of his F1 career.

He’s now outscored Tsunoda and Lawson combined and with all three drivers out of contract at the end of the season, it will be interesting to see how both teams line up on the grid at the start of 2026.