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The ART Grand Prix team, a benchmark in the categories for young drivers aspiring to F1, managed to place two of its three drivers on the podium in the Formula 3 Sprint Race at the 81st Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco: Bulgaria’s Nikola Tsolov won, ahead of Germany’s Tim Tramnitz (MP Motorsport) and Tsolov’s team-mate, Dutchman Laurens van Hoepen.
The French team’s third driver, Christian Mansell, was eliminated on the first lap when five cars piled up on the track near Casino de Monte-Carlo, causing the yellow and then red flags to come out. It took the Automobile Club de Monaco (ACM) marshals around twenty minutes to remove the cars and debris from the pile-up, before the race resumed.
There were still 22 laps to go, for 25 of the 30 cars entered this week, and Tsolov, 17, in his Alpine-badged single-seater, opened up a gap on Tramnitz. He then drove relatively quietly to a prestigious victory, 4 seconds ahead of the young German, the podium being completed by van Hoepen.
This Sprint Race was run on an inverted grid, for the top 12 drivers in qualifications. There was no miracle for the favourites in the long race on Sunday morning at 8.00am, and all the major players finished grouped between 7th and 11th place, including Swede Dino Beganovic and Briton Luke Browning, and above all Italians Leonardo Fornaroli and poleman Gabriele Mini. They will both start from the front row early Sunday morning.
The best Porsche Supercup driver of the 21st century, Larry ten Voorde (Schumacher CLRT), once again outclassed his rivals in qualifying on Friday. Twice crowned champion, in 2020 and 2021, he will start from pole position on Sunday at midday (17 laps), with his best enemy, Briton Harry King, at his side.
The British driver from Lechner Racing will be looking to repeat last year’s success, when he finally beat ten Voorde who had started from pole! The two great rivals were on another planet on Friday, and nobody was able to dislodge them from the top of the timesheets during 30 minutes of an intense, fierce session, which was briefly interrupted by a red flag, then ended prematurely by another red flag.
Ten Voorde set a time of 1:32.846, better than last year at the same time, in the same conditions, and King came within two tenths, with a time of 1:33.037 at the very end of the session, just before the final red flag. On the second row of the grid, there will be the surprising Keagan Masters (Ombra), a 21-year-old South African, and a Dutch rookie in the person of Kas Haverkort (Uniserver). Two surprises, but they didn’t steal their second place, given the very high standard of these qualifications which turned into a street fight.
On the French side, in addition to the pole position achieved by the Schumacher CLRT structure, originally set up by driver Côme Ledogar, there were other satisfying results, such as the 5th place on the grid achieved by Marvin Klein, ten Voorde’s team-mate in the French team. A product of the French Porsche Carrera Cup, Klein can aim for a podium finish on Sunday, behind the untouchable ten Voorde and King, who will be tough to overtake..
The tifosi can rest assured that they will sleep well tonight. The 2nd free practice session of the 81st Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco saw Charles Leclerc, fastest in his Ferrari, do better than three world champions: Lewis Hamilton, fastest in the 1st session, Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen. That’s 12 world championship titles altogether!
Saturday’s qualifying session promises to be sumptuous. The top four drivers in this 2nd session, all grouped within half a second, still have their work cut out. They didn’t spend the whole session on soft tyres in order to set the best possible time, and they ended the session preparing for the race on medium or hard tyres. And one thing is certain: the suspense is going to be total on Saturday at 17:00.
With a time of 1:11.278, the Monegasque, who has never yet stood on the princely podium in his native country, did better than Max Verstappen last year in qualifying (1:11.365), when he took a sensational pole position by taking all the risks, and converted it into his second win in Monaco the following day.
That was the main lesson to be learned from Friday’s race: the Ferraris are ready, efficient and fast, and Charles can aim for pole on Saturday, but he’s not the only one. Lewis Hamilton, seven-time world champion and three-time winner in Monaco, showed once again, after his best time early in the afternoon in the 1st session, that he really is a force to be reckoned with this weekend.
Sir Lewis took 2nd place in this 2nd session, less than 2 tenths behind Leclerc, driving slightly faster than Alonso and Verstappen. The Mercedes is much more efficient on the streets of Monaco than on the very fast circuits at the start of the season, where it was unable to keep up with the infernal pace of the Red Bulls, McLarens and Ferraris. And McLaren remains in the hunt, thanks also to the talent of its young drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. They are both dreaming of springing a surprise on Sunday. Or perhaps in qualifying on Saturday? Wait and see…
Dutchman Richard Verschoor (Trident) will start from pole position for Sunday’s main Formula 2 race, the curtain-raiser to the 81st Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix. However, the two French drivers competing in F2 did not disappoint in qualifying on Friday: Victor Martins (ART Grand Prix) will be next to him on the front row, and Isack Hadjar (Campos Racing) just behind, on the second row.
Martins and Hadjar had shone in Thursday’s one and only free practice session run on wet tyres. It took just a few thousandths of a second (27 to be precise) for Verschoor to claim pole position, with a best lap of 1:21.283 in Group A. Slightly faster than the Frenchman who clocked a 1:21.310 in Group B, a few minutes later.
Martins will therefore have a great opportunity on Sunday to finally launch his 2024 season, having only managed to score 9 points in eight races. Behind him will be Estonian Paul Aron (HiTech) and Czech Roland Stanek (Trident). A little further back, Briton Oliver Bearman, who has already scored points in F1 (replacing Carlos Sainz at the last minute at Ferrari), will be less well placed, on the 6th row of the grid.
Hadjar, lying in ambush on the 2nd row of the grid, just behind Verschoor, will have to keep a close eye on his mirrors with, in order, Argentinian Franco Colapinto, Italian prodigy Andrea ‘Kimi’ Antonelli, backed by Mercedes F1, and two Brazilians, Gabriel Bortoleto and Enzo Fittipaldi, grandson of double World Champion Emerson, in the 7Os.
This grid is valid for Sunday morning (42 laps, 9.40am), but not for Saturday afternoon’s Sprint Race (30 laps or 45 minutes) where the grid will be reversed for the top ten qualifiers.
After eight races in 2024, the leader of the FIA Formula 2 Championship is Zane Maloney (Rodin Motorsport). He could do no better than 7th in Group B qualifying. He will therefore start from the 7th row of the grid on Sunday and will have to put in a great effort to finish on the podium.
The first free practice session of the 81st Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix saw seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton show that his Mercedes is definitely improving, while Max Verstappen had to make do with 11th place…
There are several good reasons for Formula 1 fans to keep a close eye on what’s going to happen until Sunday in the Principality, for the 8th round of the Formula 1 World Championship. The first is that Mercedes is improving, as demonstrated by Lewis Hamilton’s best time in the first free practice session early on Friday afternoon. In front of Sir Jackie Stewart, always happy to spend some time in the Principality at the end of May.
By switching to a set of soft tyres at the end of the session, Sir Lewis, a three-time winner of this Monaco GP and already on the podium seven times in 16 appearances, was able to complete his best lap in 1:12.169. Enough to finish at the very top of the timesheet, something he hadn’t done since the 2nd free practice session in Bahrain at the end of February, for the first round of the year. And seven months earlier in Hungary, during the 3rd free practice session.
As luck would have it, his young compatriot and team-mate George Russell completed the picture by taking 3rd place in this session, sandwiched between the two McLarens of Oscar Piastri (2nd, just 29 thousandths behind Hamilton) and Lando Norris, winner of the Miami GP last month. The session was interrupted for a few minutes by a red flag, just long enough for the ever-efficient ACM stewards to clear away the debris left by a touchdown by Chinese driver Guanyu Zhou (Kick Sauber).
The tifosi had everything to cheer about at the start of the session, when Charles Leclerc topped the timesheets on the giant screens in Monaco harbour, just ahead of Carlos Sainz. But the Ferraris finished the session less well, with the Monegasque in 5th place, just ahead of Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), and the Spaniard in 10th, ahead of Max Verstappen (Red Bull). The Dutch star has a good excuse: he never used soft tires, choosing to prepare the race on Sunday by working on the setup of the RB20 with medium and hard tyres.
The big question this Friday is whether Max Verstappen, who showed himself to be a little worried on Thursday in the press conference, was hiding his game in anticipation of Saturday, or whether he was just being honest and lucid about the level of performance of his Red Bull on this very specific track. We’ll know more at 6pm on Friday, at the end of the second free practice session scheduled for this afternoon…
Italy’s Gabriele Mini (Prema Racing), last year’s winner in the Principality, will once again start from pole position to attempt the double at 8am on Sunday, in the main race of the FIA Formula 3 Championship, at the 81st Formula 1 Grand Prix of Monaco.
Mini, a member of the Alpine Drivers Academy, was already fastest in free practice on Thursday, but he had to wait until the very end of this session, in bright sunshine, to snatch pole position from Great Britain’s Luke Browning (HiTech): with a time of 1:23.942, Mini was the only driver to go under the one minute and 24 seconds mark on his last attempt, at an average speed of 143 km/h on the streets of the Principality.
Browning finished two tenths of a second behind Mini and he was just 65 thousandths ahead of another Italian, Leonardo Fornaroli (Trident), who leads the Championship after six races. The places of honour were taken by Spaniard Mari Boya (Campos Racing) in 4th place, and Mexican Noel Leon (Van Amersfoort Racing) in 5th. They will all start from the same side of the grid on Sunday morning, assigned to this qualifying Group A.
In the other group (B), the best time was set by Australian Christian Mansell, who has no known relation to Nigel, the Williams world champion. But as there is a one-second gap between Mini’s time and Mansell’s (1:24.921), the Italian driver will be on pole position on Sunday morning.
For Saturday’s Sprint race, the grid will be reversed for the top twelve drivers at the end of qualifications, both groups mixed. And young Frenchman Sami Meguetounif (Trident) will have a lot of work, starting in the middle of the grid for both races of the weekend. The winner at Imola last Sunday, he missed his qualifying session and even hit the rail at Sainte-Dévote, ending with 7th fastest time of Group B, the slowest of the two.
Monegasque Charles Leclerc has yet to stand on the princely podium at the Monaco Grand Prix since making his F1 debut in 2018, but that’s not his aim this year: “Finishing second or third doesn’t interest me, it doesn’t really excite me. I’m aiming for victory, nothing else, and I think that with the progress Ferrari has made this year, I can achieve that. There’s less of a gap between Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari. Everything will depend on qualifying on Saturday, because if I’m on pole position on Sunday, I know I’ll have a good chance of winning the race”, said the local hero on Thursday at the FIA press conference.
As he does every year, the relaxed Leclerc spoke of everything that makes Monaco an “extra-special” event, because he was born in the Principality, because he lives here and because he knows every inch of Circuit de Monaco. “We have a better car, Imola showed that, we’re moving in the right direction”, the Ferrari driver also emphasised. He also spoke of the notion of risk, and explained that in Monaco everything depends on risk assessment
« I think what you have in Monaco that you have maybe a little bit less on other tracks, on other city tracks as well, is just a risk assessment. And that’s where a driver can make a bit more the difference by taking more risk. It either pays off or not at all. But this is something that I particularly appreciate from this track. As soon as you try and go a bit more on the limit, you straight away see it on the lap time. And obviously coming into Q3, having done so many laps, you start to get pretty close with the walls. But it’s exciting. I don’t get that feeling anywhere else on the calendar. So I think risk assessment is what makes the difference here in Monaco ».
On the subject of risk, Max Verstappen, the three-time reigning world champion and two-time winner in the Principality (2021, 2023), added a very specific comment for the young drivers: “You have to make mistakes to progress. It’s important to make them because even though you tell yourself all the time I cannot do this or I cannot do that, you will only adapt really if you make them and then move forward”. During this very relaxed conference, the leader of Red Bull Racing, but also of the younger generation, was listened to very attentively by the other participants, George Russell (Mercedes), Alex Albon (Williams), Yuki Tsunoda (RB) and Esteban Ocon (Alpine).
To add a little more excitement for the fans, on the eve of the first two free practice sessions on Friday afternoon, Russell indicated that his Mercedes was also making “progress”, and that all the work carried out over the last few weeks, and the recent developments, had made it “more consistent over a lap, better balanced between slow and fast corners”. This gives cause for hope on the Monaco circuit, which generally limits the differences in pure performance and compensates for them with more aggressive driving, close to the safety rails.
All the drivers present agreed on one point: Saturday will be crucial, and anything is possible in qualifying. Just like last year, when Esteban Ocon put in a fantastic lap in his Alpine to secure 3rd place on the grid, just behind Verstappen. He then turned that into a fine 3rd place on the princely podium, his only podium in 2023 (two for Alpine with Pierre Gasly in Zandvoort). That’s what Monaco is all about.
British driver Harry King failed to win last year’s Porsche Supercup (3rd overall) due to two retirements, despite being the most successful driver in 2023 in motorsport’s most prestigious single-make series. He is still driving for Lechner Racing, by far the best team in the category, and he will be doing his utmost to dominate this season. But it’s going to be long and hard, against some very strong rivals…
King set the fastest time in free practice on Thursday in Monaco, but he will have to watch out all weekend, in particular, for two Dutch drivers: Jaap van Lagen, entered by the Italians of Dinamic Motorsport, and above all Larry ten Voorde, the double Porsche Supercup champion (2020 and 2021), who won last Sunday in Imola… ahead of Harry King.
Ten Voorde left Lechner Racing this winter to become the leader of the French Schumacher CLRT structure. He remains a prime rival for King, once again this weekend in Monaco. The top three in this free practice session, King, van Lagen and ten Voorde, are all within just three-tenths of a second of each other. This promises an eventful qualifying session on Friday, from 6.45pm, which will round off a day of battles on all levels. The ultimate rewards will be the best places on the starting grids.
The interesting thing about this 2nd round of the Porsche Supercup, of the eight scheduled this season as curtain raisers to the European Formula 1 Grands Prix, is that in 2024 there is a whole new generation of drivers, as young as they are talented, determined to shake up the established order of recent years, like the last two champions of the discipline, aged 20 and 25.
During Thursday’s session, the ‘rookies’ also made their presence felt. There were four of them in the Top 9, including Frenchman Victor Bernier (8th), entered by another French team, Martinet by Alméras. So just one piece of advice: if you’ve got grandstand seats, stay until the end of the day on Friday to watch the Porsche Supercup qualifying session. You won’t be disappointed…
The two French drivers competing in Formula 2 at the 81st Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco, Victor Martins (ART Grand Prix) and Isack Hadjar (Campos Racing), shone in Thursday’s free practice session, which was run on rain tyres on the Circuit de Monaco’s sodden track in very poor visibility conditions.
The wet session, which got underway shortly after 3pm, saw Martins set his fastest lap of 1:39.237. A good start for a potential renaissance, after suffering a very tough start of the season, scoring 9 points only in 8 races.
This very decent time put Martins at the top of the time sheet, 6 tenths of a second ahead of Norway’s Dennis Hauger (MP Motorsport). Dutchman Richard Verschoor (Trident) had to make do with third place, half a second ahead of Hadjar, when the track was still in decent condition.
After eight races in 2024, the provisional leader of the FIA Formula 2 Championship is Zane Maloney (Rodin Motorsport), a native of Barbados who dreams of a future like that of Lewis Hamilton, the 7-time world champion who also hails from the West Indies. As for 17-year-old Italian prodigy Andrea ‘Kimi’ Antonelli, backed by Mercedes, he managed to finish 8th in this wet session, for his debut at Monaco.
Maloney leads the provisional overall standings ahead of Estonian Paul Aron (HiTech), 9th in this session, and Hadjar, the real man in form at the moment: the young Frenchman has just collected 50 points in the last two Feature Races, on Sunday morning in Melbourne and Imola.
Qualifying gets underway on Friday at 3.10pm, in two groups of 11 drivers. Anything is possible for pole position.
Practice session classification
Photo © Formula 2
Italy’s Gabriele Mini (Prema Racing) set the fastest time in the one and only free practice session for Formula 3 at the 81st Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco, just 91 thousandths clear of his compatriot Leonardo Fornaroli (Trident).
The session began on slick tyres, on a dry track, and ended 45 minutes later on rain tyres, in order to start preparing for the rest of the Monaco weekend where, as usual, there will be lots of surprises, not just in terms of the weather.
Several drivers made mistakes, but without too much damage, and each time the marshals of Automobile Club de Monaco (ACM) did their job perfectly, clearing the track in record time. Mini, who won last year’s Feature Race in Monaco from pole position, made it clear that he intends to remain the boss in the Principality, even though he changed team this winter. He set a time of 1:27.400 and completed a total of 19 laps, as did Fornaroli and another favourite this weekend, Sweden’s Dino Beganovic, his team-mate at Prema.
Meguetounif in 4th place!
Behind this infernal trio, grouped together in just over one second, a young Frenchman, rookie Sami Meguetounif (Trident), the winner last Sunday at Imola of his first F3 race, posted the 4th fastest time in this session, but two seconds behind Mini. And he also provoked one of the three red flags of this very intense free practice session.
The Top 6 was completed by a Briton with a French name, Callum Voisin (Rodin Motorsport), ahead of an Australian with a famous name, Christian Mansell (ART GP), but who is not related to Nigel, the British world champion. For the record, Sebastian Montoya (Campos), son of the famous Juan Pablo, had to make do with 13th place, ahead of the only female driver entered, Sophia Floersch (21st), who races for Van Amersfoort Racing.
After six races in Bahrain, Australia and Imola, Fornaroli leads the provisional FIA Formula 3 Championship standings, ahead of Luke Browning (Hi-Tech), Beganovic and Mini. Qualifications are scheduled for Friday, from 11.05am, for two groups of 15 drivers.
