After the mandatory two-stop strategy failed to significantly impact the complexion of the Monaco GP, Toto Wolff has some suggestions…

The FIA introduced a mandatory two-stop strategy for the 2025 edition of the Grand Prix, in a bid to enliven what is usually a processional race on a one-stop strategy due to the importance of track position.

Toto Wolff suggests Monaco-specific rules

Given overtaking is nigh-on impossible in Monaco, it has led to drivers being able to control the pace to a significant degree – holding up cars behind them to ensure their tyres can last until their planned pitstop time, and then re-settling down in a similar order after those stops.

On paper, the mandatory two-stop strategy could have livened things up as it opened up the potential for some wild risk-taking in the early stages – particularly if Safety Cars or red flags occurred.

But, aside from some relatively minor Virtual Safety Car interruptions in the early stages, the experiment didn’t really yield any particularly unusual results as the race played out without many interruptions, with overtaking still being impossible around the idiosyncratic track – as evidenced by Fernando Alonso’s impressive pace with an ERS failure.

The gaps between some packs of cars were artificially increased too, particularly by canny teamwork from Racing Bulls and Williams – both of whom used one of their drivers to hold others back and create large gaps in order to give their leading drivers a ‘free’ stop.

Mercedes didn’t score any points after failing to make it into Q3 with either of its drivers on Saturday, and Mercedes‘ team boss Toto Wolff addressed how experimentation in Monaco could be tried again, with some changes, next year.

“I think, you know, even if this was a zero-stop race and we’re doing autocourse on the Sunday, it’s still a mega venue, and then it’s the Saturday shootout that matters,” he told media, including PlanetF1.com, after the Monaco Grand Prix.

“But I think what we can look at is to create some Monaco-specific regulations that there’s only a maximum [amount] of back off that you can have. You can’t hold up a train. Overtaking anyway is difficult, but you can say ‘You can’t go slower than x seconds from the leaders’.

“That will probably create a little bit more of a closer field. Does it improve the overtaking? I don’t think that’s feasible.

“We need to talk also with maybe ACM [Automobile Club de Monaco] here to say, ‘Is there anything we can change on the layout?’

“It’s difficult, we’re in a city, we’re limited by a mountain and the sea, but I see the positive. This is an unbelievable spectacle.”

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While the 2025 edition ultimately didn’t quite deliver upon its potential, the two-stop did add an extra variable into the mix, and did open up the possibility for teams to experiment with their strategies.

It was a move away from “re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic” that the normal regulations would almost certainly have provided, as Sauber team boss Jonathan Wheatley assessed, and Wolff agreed that he was happy to see something unusual had been tried in an attempt to address Monaco’s racing issues.

“We’re motorsport people,” he said.

“And so the perspective I look at it is that most of the relevant sporting event is on Saturday, and it’s always been.

“But what F1 has created here is unbelievable. Grandstands full, terraces full, boats like I’ve never seen before.

“Yesterday I filmed from my terrace a traffic jam of one and a half kilometres at 2:30 in the morning. That is the kind of 360-degree angle that Formula 1 needs to have.

“We have spectacular races on the Saturday. They’re kind of old-school tracks that function for whatever reason, we don’t know either.

“Here, we tried something. We tried an experiment with two stop, it didn’t change anything in the outcome –  you had that gang at the front who had basically free air, and then midfield people battling for points backing up massively.

“There were teams that were punching above their weight, like the Racing Bulls, and they had to protect their position, as well as the Williams, and we [Mercedes] were probably one of the victims of that.

“But we were because our Saturday didn’t go well. We had a fast car, Kimi [Antonelli] touched the barrier, and that’s absolutely on for a rookie. With George, we just run out of power out of nowhere. And it was a car that was good for the first two rows, or better.

“Then you’d race on the front part of the track – where we were, we were not seeing any land.”

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