The madness of Monaco
Formula 1 is back at the legendary Circuit de Monaco, a place where drivers thread the needle through 19 turns on a narrow 3.337km ribbon of asphalt. It is absolute insanity. The race spans 78 laps and a total distance of 260.286km, testing a driver's mind as much as their machine. As Nelson Piquet once put it, racing here is like riding a bicycle around your living room.
Everything about this track feels like a relic of a wilder time, dating back to 1929 when Antony Noghes first organized a gathering here. It remains a core pillar of motorsport's 'Triple Crown'. Because the walls are so punishing, the cars will run in a fixed maximum downforce setting all weekend—Straight Mode is off limits here for the first time this season. If you want to overtake, you must rely on the Overtake Mode, with the activation line sitting between Turns 18 and 19.
Jolyon Palmer, a former Renault F1 driver, calls it a beautiful, true driver’s track that feels like madness in an F1 car. From the climb toward Massenet where you stare at the sky, to the bumpy, eternal-feeling hairpin, there is simply no room for error. It is no wonder that McLaren has tasted success here more than any other team, with 16 victories to their name, and they hit their 1000th Grand Prix milestone this weekend.
