Monaco was decided on two out-laps

One might have expected Pirelli to bring the C6 to Monaco. They did not. The dry range had been trimmed for 2026, and Monaco got the same trio as Miami and Canada: C3 as hard, C4 as medium, C5 as soft – the softest combination in this year's range, according to F1.com. And the 2025 experiment with two compulsory stops was gone. At least two compounds in a dry race, so one stop, according to F1.com.

That changed the whole game. Monaco is easy on tyres: low speeds, smooth asphalt, the load coming from traction rather than lateral force. Pirelli expected very low degradation with some risk of graining, according to F1.com. The question was not how the tyres would last but how to avoid losing track position when the compulsory stop had to be made. A stop took around 24 seconds through the pit lane – Hamilton 24.138, Russell 24.029, Antonelli 24.136 – according to F1.com, and in our model Monaco's overtaking threshold is 3.0 seconds: in practice nobody passes anybody.

Antonelli started perfectly. Verstappen did not: the engine had misbehaved on the formation lap, he could not reach the launch revs, the engine effectively died when the clutch was released and he rolled on battery power until the combustion engine came back – sounding bad. Red Bull brought him slowly to the pits, zero laps completed, according to F1.com. The front was Antonelli – Hamilton – Leclerc, and Mercedes had the strongest thing you can have in Monaco: the lead and clean air.

Hamilton reported heavy degradation and overheating rear tyres early, according to F1.com. The data agrees: his medium lost 0.053 seconds per lap, and on laps 24–27 he ran 77.7–78.2 against Antonelli's 76.7–77.3. On lap 27 he was 11.4 seconds behind the leader and 2.9 ahead of Leclerc. Ferrari brought him in on lap 28, medium to hard, before Pirelli's window.

It was no undercut threat to Antonelli – eleven seconds plus a stop is thirty-four. It was a stop to stop the bleeding. And it hit Leclerc. Hamilton's in-lap and out-lap together cost 18.8 seconds against two normal laps; the out-lap was 80.8, only two seconds slower than normal. On fresh hards he then ran 1.0 second per lap faster than on his worn mediums. Leclerc continued to lap 35 – mid-window – and his stop cost 24.4 seconds, with an 83.4 out-lap. When he emerged, Hamilton was past. P2 had changed hands within Ferrari, without an overtake, and with a 5.6-second difference in stop cost Leclerc could not have responded even the lap after Hamilton. The simulator has Leclerc P3 on lap 57 whether he stops on lap 27, 30 or 40.

Russell was stuck 0.5 seconds behind Hadjar and stopped on lap 31; Hadjar responded on lap 32 and came out behind, according to F1.com. F1 called it an undercut that worked. The data says something more precise: Russell's stop cost 18.6 seconds, Hadjar's 23.8. Hadjar's out-lap on cold hards was 85.1 – six seconds over normal. With half a second in hand the place was decided not by Russell stopping first but by Mercedes getting their hards to work immediately. Hadjar also had driveability, power and first-gear problems for much of the race, according to F1.com.

The pattern at the front is clear: Hamilton 80.8, Russell 80.8, Antonelli 82.2, Piastri 83.6, Leclerc 83.4, Hadjar 85.1 on the out-lap. In a race where nobody overtakes, those seconds were the strategy.

Antonelli stopped on lap 37, once everyone behind had shown their hand, and came out 12.5 seconds ahead of Hamilton, according to F1.com. His stop cost 23.3 seconds, but it did not matter. The interesting part is that his hard was slower than his medium: base pace 77.23 against 76.71, and 0.5 seconds per lap worse after the stop. Antonelli's medium was the best tyre of the race. His only threat was a neutralisation. Had Mercedes brought him in on lap 28 to cover Hamilton he would still have won – as on lap 27 or 45. From pole in Monaco, the strategy is not to have one.

Piastri ran to lap 48, eleven laps longer than Antonelli and well outside the window, according to F1.com. Once Norris retired with power problems on lap 44, McLaren had one car left to keep the option open with. The numbers: between laps 37 and 48 Piastri on his old mediums lost exactly one second net to Russell on hards, and he came out in the place he had held net all along, P6. A stop on lap 30 would have given P5 ahead of Hadjar – the only position change the simulator finds at the front in 57 laps. The long stint cost nothing and gained nothing, until the Safety Car came.

Aston Martin ran Alonso 55 laps on the C5, and Pirelli held it up as proof that the soft was a genuine race tyre, according to press.pirelli.com. It was – the slope was 0.053 seconds per lap, three seconds slower at the end of the stint than at the start. But the soft start and the long stint delivered nothing: with a medium start and a normal stop on lap 35 Alonso would have been P9 on lap 57 instead of P15. That the tyre could do it does not mean it paid.

Stroll crashed at Anthony Noghes; the Safety Car came on laps 58–60 depending on whose lap count you follow, according to F1.com. Piastri stopped on lap 59, Hamilton, Leclerc, Hadjar, Russell, Gasly and Lawson on lap 60, Antonelli on lap 61 – all for softs. Hamilton and Piastri served five-second penalties in the same stop, and Ferrari double-stacked: Leclerc waited behind Hamilton, 34.9 seconds in the pit lane against Hamilton's 31.2, according to F1.com.

At the restart Leclerc got a brake balance he described as impossible – almost nothing from the rears, too much from the front – and went straight into the barrier at the final corner on lap 65–66, according to F1.com. Another Safety Car, then a red flag. Under the red flag everyone could change tyres, and with that every offset was gone. The whole field restarted on the C5 soft, the obvious choice for grip and warm-up over a handful of laps, according to F1.com. By then Antonelli had used all three compounds and set his best times on each, according to F1.com – but the base strategy was still medium to hard; the rest was neutralisations.

The restart rewrote the result. Russell, P3, had a drive-through pending: his five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane had been served incorrectly under the Safety Car when the mechanics started work too early, and he drove through the pits on lap 72, P12 at the flag, according to F1.com. Without the penalty he would have finished P4. Hadjar lost places to Russell and Gasly on the restart lap but knew both carried penalties: Gasly had ten seconds for two pit-lane speeding offences. Hadjar stayed within the margin, Gasly crossed the line P3 and became P7, Hadjar P3, according to F1.com. Antonelli won by 6.3 seconds from Hamilton, who would have finished P2 even with a stop in the window on lap 35.

Judged on the information available when the decision was made:

• Pirelli – one stop, three equal routes: right. Medium degradation came out higher than expected, 0.03–0.09 s/lap.
• Mercedes/Antonelli – wait until lap 37: optimal from pole, and free because the medium was his fastest tyre.
• Ferrari/Hamilton – lap 28 against degradation: right for him, cost Leclerc P2.
• Ferrari/Leclerc – lap 35 in the window: reasonable, but the stop was 5.6 seconds dearer than his team-mate's.
• Mercedes/Russell – lap 31: right, and decided by an 80.8 out-lap.
• Red Bull/Hadjar – lap 32: reacted, lost six seconds on cold tyres, saved P3 with arithmetic at the end.
• McLaren/Piastri – lap 48: rational option value, zero effect.
• Aston Martin/Alonso – 55 laps on the soft: the tyre lasted, the strategy cost six places.

Monaco 2026 is the opposite of Miami. There Mercedes created a position by stopping before the rival. Here the timing of the stops created no positions at all – the simulator finds the same order on lap 57 almost whatever anyone does. What there was to win were the five seconds between a good and a bad out-lap on cold hards. That is where the race was decided, and Mercedes and Hamilton won it.

Sources: F1.com (preview, Pirelli comments, race report, pit-stop summary, penalty round-up, quotes from Verstappen, Leclerc, Russell, Hadjar and Norris), press.pirelli.com, FastF1 data for lap times, stint slopes, pit times and running order per lap. Simulator pit loss: 22.5 s under green (measured median), 11.2 under the VSC, 9.0 under the SC. Lap numbers refer to the lap on which the driver entered the pits; after lap 57 the data is disturbed by two Safety Cars and a red flag, and the simulator's final positions should be read with that in mind.