Formula 1’s most iconic race will see a substantial change this season. The Monaco Grand Prix, long criticised for its processional Sundays, will see a new rule come into action in the hopes of injecting more excitement into the weekend.
Confirmed in February of this year, the FIA has mandated that all drivers must pit twice, and therefore use at least three sets of tyres during the Grand Prix, instead of the standard two sets. Even if it rains, teams must still run three different sets of tyres, with Pirelli allocating another set of Full Wet tyres on top of the standard two for this reason.
Why was the change made?
The Monaco Grand Prix circuit is tight. And because of this, overtaking is incredibly hard for drivers with the current-generation cars being so large. In 2024, the top 10 cars remained the same throughout the whole race. In fact, there were only four overtakes recorded over the 78 laps of the campaign.
Bernie Collins of Sky Sports F1 discussed the change of rules:
“Monaco is such that you can pace manage the stint by driving slowly and make any tyre basically last the entire race, because the overtaking threshold in Monaco is something like two and a half seconds that you need to be quicker overtake.
Pierre Gasly, Alpine A524
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
“So, if you just drive that far off the pace, you can make the tyre last the whole race. So last year we had a Monaco where everyone stopped under the red flag, so there were very few pit stops. And then basically, the majority of the field ran the whole race without any other interaction. So, this is just to prevent that from happening again.”
Opinions on the rule change
Drivers have welcomed the change. Charles Leclerc, the Monegasque who won 2024’s race, told Sky Sports News the following at the time:
“I think it will definitely help the Sunday, especially with strategy. The excitement on Sunday is maybe a bit less than what you will hope.”
In a recent press release from Ferrari, Arthur Leclerc, younger brother to Charles Leclerc, gave his two cents:
“I think it’s good to have two mandatory pit stops because it will bring a bit more action and unpredictability to the race, and it will also allow the drivers to push their tyres harder. The last few races were all about tyre management.
“This year I think it will add some strategy to the picture. Nevertheless, with Monaco being Monaco I think that at the end of the day it will be paramount to do well in qualifying to have a good race. I’m really interested to see what happens.”
Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin expects a challenging race.
“It definitely reduces the probability of teams saving their tyres to run to the end,” he said.
“It will be interesting though because it’s a race where you know how many times everyone’s going to stop.
“It’ll be quite predictable from that point of view, but it will also be quite challenging from a strategic point of view because ideally at Monaco in the past you got out in front and stayed there.
“But having to make two pit stops, that’s going to be even more challenging.”
Strategy changes
With two mandatory pit stops, teams have an opportunity to experiment with strategy.
“With no clear pit-stop windows, it could present opportunities for drivers starting from further back to move up the order by making the most of running in clean air,” predicts Pirelli.
What to watch for this weekend
As you’d expect, qualifying will still be the most important part of this weekend. The rule change doesn’t address the fundamental issue of the circuit, but the strategic opportunities will hopefully create a more interesting Sunday, especially for the casual viewer.
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