F1 Focus: Monotony in Monaco but bigger picture looks bright
Water is wet, Ferraris are red and the Monaco Grand Prix isn't very exciting but while the race once again didn't produce much entertainment, it did at least provide hope that the rest of the F1 season will.
Here are my thoughts on what went down in Monte Carlo.
Leclerc gets much-needed happy homecoming
It hasn't been the easiest of seasons for Charles Leclerc. Teammate Carlos Sainz has often been as strong or stronger than him, leading many to claim that Ferrari chose to drop the wrong driver for next season, but the Monegasque showed on home turf that he's still his team's main man and broke a curse in the process.
He was at his very best in qualifying, going over a tenth faster than anyone else, and didn't put a foot wrong on race day as he cruised to victory. Given the heartbreak he's suffered after starting on pole in the past and how desperate he would have been to put things right, he showed real mental strength to keep his cool and finally get the dream win that he's deserved for a long time.
It's a triumph that could really spark his season into life. The buzz of winning Monaco will stick with him for a long time, and he's now free of the pressure he was under to finally win a race again after failing to do so since the summer of 2022 despite getting 12 pole positions during that drought. The desperation to end that run led to mistakes, and he's now free of it.
How much could he go on to achieve this year now that he is? Well, he's only 31 points behind Max Verstappen, speaking of which...
Is the Red Bull reign of terror over?
Just over a month ago, it looked like we were in for another season dominated by Verstappen and Red Bull after he cruised to victory in four of the opening five races, but in the three rounds since, such dominance has been nowhere to be seen.
After being beaten by the McLaren of Lando Norris in Miami, the reigning champion then only beat the Brit by less than a second at Imola before qualifying and finishing down in sixth in Monaco, where both McLaren and Ferrari were genuinely stronger than Red Bull.
As a result of those two teams locking out the top four in Monte Carlo, Red Bull now only lead the Italian team by 24 points and McLaren have closed the gap to under 100. What's more, with Sergio Perez struggling again, it's fair to say both of the challengers have stronger lineups than the title holders.
One of the Ferrari or McLaren boys challenging Verstappen for the driver's championship may be too big an ask, but it's now very much looking like we'll get a battle for the constructors' title this year, and plenty of battles for race wins.
It will be fascinating to see how Red Bull handle that. Their winning on-track has somewhat papered over the many cracks that have started to appear off-track but if that winning stops, the civil war between team boss Christian Horner and Helmut Marko - with Verstappen seemingly very much on the latter's side - that has already lost them Adrian Newey could well ramp up again.
F1 has to make changes to keep Monaco's magic
"At this point, we gain nothing by going faster," George Russell was told early on by his team. "F*ck me this is boring, I should've brought my pillow," Verstappen told his team later. These aren't the sort of team radio messages that we should be hearing during any Formula 1 race, let alone the biggest on the calendar, and yet they were all too familiar.
Thanks to the location and the history, the Monaco Grand Prix undoubtedly remains magical as a spectacle, but as a race, it simply isn't good enough anymore. Actually, can we even call it a race? With the size of modern cars making overtaking all but impossible, 'luxury traffic jam' would be a more accurate term.
That was the case more than ever this year with the early Red Flag allowing cars to put on a set of hard tyres and go to the end on them, eliminating the need for pit-stops, the one remaining piece of jeopardy that the street race has. We can only hope that it did at least make the F1 officials watching - if they managed to stay awake - realise that changes need to be made to live things up.
What could those changes be? Well, the obvious long-term solution is to change the regulations to make the cars smaller again and, in the short-term, they could introduce a rule that requires each car to use all three tyre compounds, guaranteeing some pit-stop-induced drama at the very least.
It obviously has to stay on the calendar given how iconic it is but action needs to be taken to make it an entertaining affair again, because it's getting to the point where fans are starting to dread it, and nobody should ever dread the Monaco Grand Prix.
