The 3rd and final Free Practice session for the Formula 1 TAG Heuer Grand Prix de Monaco, held at siesta time on Saturday, saw Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) once again set the fastest time, as he had done in the two previous sessions on Friday, so that he could arrive at 4 p.m. for qualifying with full confidence. The session ended with a red flag, two minutes before the end, after Lewis Hamilton lost control of his Ferrari at the top of the Ostend uphill portion, just before reaching the Casino square in Monte-Carlo.

As on Friday, Leclerc was ahead of Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing) and the two McLaren drivers, with championship leader Oscar Piastri ahead of Lando Norris. But Verstappen injected a little suspense into this sunny afternoon in the Principality: he set the 2nd fastest time on Pirelli Medium tyres, just two tenths behind Leclerc who had set his best time on Soft tyres. Will Leclerc manage to keep an edge on Verstappen when the Dutch maestro goes out with Soft Tyres, at the end of Q3?

Hamilton could only manage 5th place in this session, half a second behind Leclerc, and he walked back to the Ferrari pits leaving his SF-25 a little damaged and without a front tyre on the rim of his car. Confidence is important in Monaco, so it wasn’t a good point to go out at the end of free practice, but the seven-time world champion knows how to bounce back, so anything is still possible in qualifying.

In the midfield chasing pack, Alex Albon put his Williams in 6th place, just ahead of the Racing Bull of Liam Lawson, the Kiwi sidelined by Red Bull Racing at the start of the season, in Japan. And his team-mate Isack Hadjar, in the other Racing Bull car, fell back to 17th place in this session, which started gently and ended with a bang.

The suspense-filled qualifying session gets underway at 16:00. The time to beat, the reference time, is 1:10.270 set by Charles the Monegasque last year. All bets are off…

📊 Here are the results of the final Free Practice session 🏎️

Make it 3 for Charles Leclerc 👑

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📊 Voici les résultats de la dernière séance d’Essais Libres 🏎️

Charles Leclerc réalise une nouvelle fois le meilleur temps 👑#MonacoGP #F1 #MonacoCircuit pic.twitter.com/0dHOEKTnU2

— Automobile Club de Monaco (@ACM_Media) May 24, 2025

Norway’s Martinius Stenshorne (HiTech) won the Formula 3 Sprint Race at the Formula 1 TAG Heuer Grand Prix de Monaco on Saturday morning, joining Lewis Hamilton on the podium who won on the same track just twenty years ago, in May 2005. He started well, but was never overtaken, finishing ahead of two drivers from the French ART Grand Prix team, Finland’s Tuukka Taponen and Dutchman Laurens van Hoepen. Starting from pole position, Alessandro Giusti (MP Motorsport) finished 4^th.

The race began with a collision at the end of the field, which resulted in a long safety car outing (8 laps) while the ACM Stewards evacuated the cars and cleared the debris from the track.

When the race restarted on lap 9, the leading positions remained unchanged, Stenshorne remained in the lead, in his McLaren livery, and Frenchman Alessandro Giusti (MP Motorsport), who started from pole position thanks to the principle of the inverted grid (for the top 12 in qualifying), never managed to come back or threaten the leading trio.

Behind Giusti, the places of honour were taken by the main players in the FIA Formula 3 championship, including Austrian Charlie Wurz (6^th), the son of Alexander Wurz, Brazilian Rafael Camara (7^th), the championship leader, and Spaniard Mari Boya (8^th). They did everything they could to climb back up the rankings, but to no avail.

As for the two drivers who had been the best in qualifying on Friday morning, Nikola Tsolov (Campos) and Roman Bilinski (Rodin Motorsport), they completely missed their race and didn’t score a single point. But they will be able to take their revenge on Sunday at 8.00am by starting from the front row and scoring some big points.

Provisional Classification

🏆 MARTINIUS STENSHORNE WINS THE SPRINT RACE IN F3 !

Tuuka Taponen completes the podium with the 2nd place and Laurens Van Hoepen finishes in 3rd position

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🏆 MARTINIUS STENSHORNE REMPORTE LA COURSE SPRINT F3 !

Tuuka Taponen complète le podium avec la 2ème place et… pic.twitter.com/QYqSws2pre

— Automobile Club de Monaco (@ACM_Media) May 24, 2025

Dutchman Robert de Haan (Lechner Racing) will be able to start the 2nd round of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup from pole position, Sunday at noon, after setting the fastest time in qualifying late on Friday afternoon.

The designated successor to his compatriot Larry ten Voorde, the absolute master of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup in recent years, he will also be able to take his revenge after retiring from the opening round of the 2025 season at Imola last Sunday.

The best rookie of 2024, de Haan wears the number 1 in his pink Lechner Racing Porsche. On Friday, he beat the German winner of the Imola round, Theo Oeverhaus, by just 55 thousandths. And the good surprise for the French was that Marvin Klein, the Dutchman’s team-mate at Lechner Racing, took 3^rd place in qualifying and will therefore start on the 2nd row of the grid at midday on Sunday, for 30 laps which promise to be fierce.

This qualifying session was slowed down or interrupted several times by yellow and red flags, with several participants making mistakes in different parts of the Circuit de Monaco. It was a veritable festival of small and big mistakes, and the ACM Marshals, as always, were very efficient in removing the cars as quickly as possible and clearing the carbon debris from the track.

Behind the leading trio grouped together by two tenths of a second, 4^th place in qualifying, and therefore on Sunday’s grid, was taken by South African Keagan Masters (Ombra Racing), ahead of another Frenchman, Alessandro Ghiretti, the best rookie of 2023 and now the leader of the reigning champion team, Schumacher CLRT, originally founded by driver Côme Ledogar.

With two French drivers in the Top 5, Sunday’s race promises to be an interesting one for French fans of the only single-make competition to be run as a curtain-raiser to the European Grands Prix.

A category in which there are 7 Dutch and 6 German drivers this year. On the French side, the third driver involved, Mathys Jaubert (Martinet by Alméras), will start on the 13^th place on the grid, which will feature 28 highly motivated drivers. This will happen on Sunday at midday, just three hours before the Formula 1 TAG Heuer Grand Prix de Monaco 2025.

Classification

⏱️ Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup pole position goes to Robert De Haan ! ⏱️

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⏱️ La pole position en Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup revient à Robert de Haan ! ⏱️
#MonacoGP #F1 #PorscheMobil1Supercup #MonacoCircuit pic.twitter.com/pWrMeuFk05

— Automobile Club de Monaco (@ACM_Media) May 23, 2025

Qualifying for the Formula 1 TAG Heuer Grand Prix de Monaco on Saturday at 16:00 promises to be fierce, intense and torrid, if the two free practice sessions held on Friday in the streets of the Principality are anything to go by. These two sessions enabled Scuderia Ferrari to show that it might be capable of beating the odds on Sunday, at the 82^nd edition of the most prestigious Grand Prix on the F1 calendar.

Charles Leclerc ahead of Oscar Piastri (2^nd), the championship leader thanks to four wins in seven races, Lewis Hamilton (3^rd) ahead of Lando Norris (4^th), the other driver of the British team, gave the Scuderia a small psychological advantage on Friday, while testing all sorts of set-ups and tyres, from the softest to the hardest.

Another surprising result from the 2^nd session of the day was that the two Racing Bulls rookies, Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar, finished just behind, in 5^th and 6^th places, (Ferrari), while the young Frenchman, who twice hit the safety rail, at the Port chicane and at Sainte Dévote, only completed 17 laps, compared with around thirty for his most assiduous rivals. It was the other big surprise of the day, as nobody expected them to be at such a high level, especially the New Zealander, who was replaced by Yuki Tsunoda at Red Bull Racing after just a few races.

Friday’s disappointment came from Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing), who finished the session six tenths of a second behind Leclerc, on the verge of the Top 10, after losing long minutes due to a problem that is as yet unknown, without having made a mistake like many others today. The other big satisfaction for Mercedes was the level of 18-year-old rookie Kimi Antonelli, who spent a long time in the Top 3 of this 2^nd session.

For this 8^th round (out of 24) of the 2025 season, it seems that the cards may be reshuffled, due to this very special track where the average speed is much slower than elsewhere. No one can make any predictions for Sunday, as the McLarens are not far behind the Ferraris, but one thing is certain: the tifosi will sleep well and have sweet dreams. That’s part of the magic of the Formula 1 TAG Heuer Monaco Grand Prix. The next big meeting is scheduled for Saturday at 4 pm, for a crucial qualifying session. We cannot wait.

Free Practice 2

📊 Check out the results from the second Free Practice session 🏎️

Once again, Charles Leclerc grabs the fastest lap of this session 👀

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📊 Voici les résultats de la deuxième séance d’essais libres 🏎️

Une fois encore Charles Leclerc réalise le meilleur temps de cette… pic.twitter.com/Fdwnf8pzgc

— Automobile Club de Monaco (@ACM_Media) May 23, 2025

This is probably one of the smallest qualifying gaps in the whole history of Formula 2: on Friday in Monaco, just 3 thousandths of a second separated championship leader Alexander Dunne (Rodin Motorsport) and Frenchman Victor Martins (ART GP). It is therefore the young Irishman who will start from pole position in the Feature Race at 9.40am on Sunday morning.

Starting in Group A, Martins, a development driver at the Williams Academy, thought he had done the hard part by improving his time from free practice on Thursday by a massive half-second: 1:21.145 compared with 1:21.715 the day before. But that was without taking into account the talent of Dunne, who set a time of 1:21.142 at the end of the session, three thousandths better than Martins. That’s the equivalent of not even a metre on the 3.3km of Circuit de Monaco.

With the grid split in two for this weekend’s races, it’s Group B which will be lining up behind poleman Dunne, with reigning F3 champion Leonardo Fornaroli (Invicta Racing) on row 2, Sebastian Montoya (Prema Racing), son of former Williams F1 driver, on row 3, and Luke Browning (HiTech) on row 4.

On the other side of the grid, behind Martins, there will also be some fine names in the shape of Richard Verschoor (MP Motorsport), another 24-year-old ‘veteran’ like the Frenchman, followed by Arvid Linblad (Campos Racing), who is very young and very talented, and above all, on the 4^th row, next to Browning, another Italian, Gabriele Mini (Prema Racing), who has won the Monaco race twice in F3. He is almost at home in the Principality. Very exciting!

Qualifying Group A

Qualifying Group B

⏱️ Alexander Dunne grabs pole position in Monaco ⏱️

Victor Martins will start next to him on Sunday !

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⏱️ Alexander Dunne réalise la pole position à Monaco ⏱️

Victor Martins partira à ses côtés dimanche !
#MonacoGP #F1 #F2 #MonacoCircuit pic.twitter.com/36DWRkZUsX

— Automobile Club de Monaco (@ACM_Media) May 23, 2025

The first Free Practice session of the Formula 1 TAG Heuer Grand Prix de Monaco allowed Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), the title holder in the Principality, to show that he was perhaps in a position to fight for the win, although we’ll have to wait for Saturday afternoon’s qualifying to be sure. The Monegasque finished slightly ahead of Max Verstappen (Red Bull) and Lando Norris (McLaren), thanks also to on-track traffic which prevented championship leader Oscar Piastri (McLaren) from completing a clear lap at the end of the session, on soft tyres.

This is already the 8^th round (out of 24) of the 2025 season, and Leclerc was not very optimistic on Thursday at the FIA press conference. But it was as if the many F1 and Scuderia fans he met in the MGP Fan Zone on Friday morning had given last year’s winner a boost. He was the only driver to go under one minute and 12 seconds per lap, improving on Lewis Hamilton’s time of 1:12.169 in EL1 last year, in a Mercedes, by two tenths.

Sir Lewis changed teams this winter and spent a good part of FP1 searching for the limit, all over the circuit (9^th of this session). At the top of the timesheet at the start of the session, he is aiming for an eighth podium in the Principality, like Ayrton Senna in another era. And at the end of the session, he treated the public at the Piscine to a superb jump, rally-style, after leaving the ideal trajectory at very high speed, in the corner of the famous swimming-pool. He then returned to the Ferrari pit to check that nothing was broken on his SF-25 which is clearly making progress.

Behind Charles and Max, the young father of Lily, Norris took 3^rd place in this session, while team-mate Piastri, who deserved better, was blocked by a slower driver in his final attempt. As did a number of drivers, starting with Leclerc, who tore off his front left wing on the side of Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin at the start of the session, when the Canadian misunderstood what was going on at the Fairmont hairpin.

The big question this Friday is whether the Ferraris, in FP2 from 5pm, will be as convincing in race conditions as they have been so often since the start of the season. For the true level of performance, we’ll have to be patient and wait for qualifying on Saturday afternoon. As Max Verstappen said in the FIA press conference on Thursday: ‘Until we finish our very last lap in Q3, we won’t know where we stand with our car’. This is probably the case for all the drivers taking part in this Formula 1 TAG Heuer Monaco Grand Prix. Including both Ferrari drivers, of course…

Results

📊 Here is your Top 3 from the first free practice session 🏎️

Fastest lap for Charles Leclerc 👊🇲🇨

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📊 Voici votre Top 3 de la première séance d’essais libres 🏎️

Temps le plus rapide pour Charles Leclerc 👊🇲🇨#MonacoGP #F1 #MonacoCircuit pic.twitter.com/yM92ef3efF

— Automobile Club de Monaco (@ACM_Media) May 23, 2025

Bulgaria’s Nikola Tsolov (Campos Racing) will start from pole position for the Formula 3 Feature Race of the Formula 1 TAG Heuer Grand Prix de Monaco, on Sunday morning at 8.00am, after taking pole position on Friday morning in Group A qualifying, ahead of Spain’s Mari Boya, his team-mate at Campos. He will be joined on the front row by another driver from Eastern Europe, Poland’s Roman Bilinski (Rodin Motorsport), who set the fastest time of the 15 drivers in Group B just before midday, ahead of his British team-mate Callum Voisin.

Both sessions were briefly interrupted by red flags, but it was young Brando Badoer’s (Prema Racing) crash in Group B that had the most serious consequences for his rivals. With three minutes remaining in the session, the top drivers did come out of the pits for a last flying lap, but too late to do better than Tsolov in Group A.

On Sunday’s grid, the championship leader after six races, Brazilian Rafael Câmara, who has already won twice this season (in Melbourne and Bahrain), will be on the 4th row, on the side of the grid allocated to Group B, behind Roman Bilinski, Callum Voisin and a third driver to keep a close eye on, German Tim Tramnitz (MP Motorsport), currently 3rd in the championship.

Tramnitz will be joined on the 4th row by Charlie Wurz (Trident), who set the 4th fastest time in Group A. The young Austrian is the son of Alex Wurz, a former Benetton and Williams F1 driver (69 GPs contested, 3 podiums between 1997 and 2007).

Frenchman Giusti on pole for the Sprint Race

The good news for French fans is that they will see a French driver on pole position for Saturday’s Sprint Race, based on the principle of the inverted grid (for the top 12): Alessandro Giusti (MP Motorsport) was lucky enough to set the 6th fastest time in qualifying, in Group B, and will therefore be ideally placed to win this Sprint of 23 laps (or 40 minutes + 1 lap), on Saturday at 10.45 am.

On Sunday morning, the Feature Race will be contested over 27 laps (or 45 minutes + 1 lap). Tsolov will be on pole, with Bilinski alongside him, and another Frenchman, 17-year-old Théophile Naël (Van Amersfoort Racing), an F3 rookie, will start further back on the 12th row. It will be very early (8am). Time to wake up!

Qualifying Group A

Qualifying Group B

F3: Tsolov en pole positon https://t.co/8VSDrWlpc9#MonacoGP #F1 #MonacoCircuit pic.twitter.com/4HiWCUQTHs

— Automobile Club de Monaco (@ACM_Media) May 23, 2025

Saturday’s qualifying session was one of the main topics of this afternoon’s FIA press conference, with several drivers expressing their views in very precise and enthusiastic terms. Including four-time reigning world champion Max Verstappen, of course.

For Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing), who is aiming for a third win in the Principality, ‘we won’t know where we stand with the car until the last lap of Q3 late on Saturday afternoon. We’ve made a lot of progress since the start of the season and we’re learning every day in F1’. Red Bull made so much progress that Verstappen already won twice this year, in Japan and at Imola last week, on “two fast tracks”, Max underlined.

Also asked about the specific nature of the Monaco circuit, the young father of Lily, born last month, added that ‘the current F1 cars are really big, so it’s not easy. You never feel totally at ease in Monaco, and it’s very difficult to do a perfect lap in qualifying’. And his incredible lap in 2023, for a last minute pole position, ‘wasn’t the best of his life’, he judged, because he had missed the first two sectors.

Charles Leclerc (Scuderia Ferrari) was initially very measured in what he had to say, before offering a hopeful analysis for Ferrari, in response to a very pertinent question from a journalist: ‘In general, we are not good in slow corners, and in Monaco there are only slow corners. But as we don’t have to look for a compromise between slow corners and fast sections, on this circuit, perhaps we’ll find a set-up that suits us…’. All Scuderia fans hope so.

Hadjar pays tribute to Senna

‘This is the best qualifying session of the year,’ said Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls), as enthusiastic as ever despite never having driven in F1 at Monaco. But he really enjoyed his qualifying session last year in Formula 2 and should have won the race, which he led from start to finish, were it not for a premature pit stop by one of his rivals at the start of the race and a safety car that spoiled everything at the end. But Monaco remains a special place for him, as it was there that he signed his very first contract with Red Bull, ‘at the age of 16’, with Dr Helmut Marko who had spotted him, he recalled on Thursday. And to pay tribute to one of his childhood idols, Ayrton Senna, Isack has put all the Brazilian champion’s Monaco stats on his helmet for this very special round.

To spice up this Formula 1 TAG Heuer Monaco Grand Prix 2025 even more, the FIA has introduced a novelty, just for this race: all drivers will have to stop at least twice in the pits. But nobody knows what it will mean on the track, as everything will depend on whether the safety car comes out. ‘Either it will be straightforward, from start to finish, or it will be a lottery,’ said Charles Leclerc. As for Williams driver Alex Albon, he fears a manoeuvre between team-mates from the same team, which would allow one of them to block the pack while the other gets a ‘free stop’. Referring to the Haas drivers’ strategy during last year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix…

Pierre Gasly (Alpine) also spoke about the two stops and Alpine’s hopes on this circuit, which generally suits him, as he has already finished in the points five times in Monaco. He also spoke about Wednesday’s football match at Stade Louis II between the Barbaguians and the Nazionale Piloti, of which he was captain. He had very seriously considered a career as a footballer… ‘until the day I got into a go-kart’, he confided.

On Friday, two free practice sessions are on the menu, at 1.30pm and 5pm. The fans can’t wait…

Dutchman Robert de Haan, the designated successor to Larry ten Voorde, the now-retired master of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup, left it to no-one else to set the fastest time in free practice late on Thursday afternoon in Monaco.

Best rookie of 2024, and rewarded with the number 1 on his pink Lechner Racing Porsche, de Haan beat two compatriots, Huun van Eijndhoven and Jaap van Lagen, followed by two Germans, Theo Oeverhaus and Alexander Tauscher, and another Dutch driver, Kas Haverkort.

Of the 28 drivers entered in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup this year, there are 7 Dutch and 6 Germans, but there are also 3 French drivers. In this first session, it was Marvin Klein, Robert de Haan’s new team-mate at Lechner Racing, who was the best, with the 8^th fastest time of the day, ahead of Alessandro Ghiretti (Schumacher CLRT), 10^th in the session, and Mathys Jaubert (Martinet by Alméras), 11^th.

Qualifying is scheduled for Friday, between 18:45 and 19:15. This will mark the end of a marathon day, with seven sessions including two free practice sessions for the F1 cars and drivers, eagerly awaited by the thousands of fans who have come to the Principality for the Formula 1 TAG Heuer Grand Prix de Monaco 2025.

Classification
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📊 Résultats de la séance d’essais libres en Porsche Mobil1 Supercup #MonacoGP #F1 #PorscheMobil1Supercup #MonacoCircuit pic.twitter.com/d5etjrSsfP

— Automobile Club de Monaco (@ACM_Media) May 22, 2025

Frenchman Victor Martins (ART GP), a Formula 2 veteran at just 24 years of age, got his Monegasque weekend off to a flying start by setting the fastest time in free practice on Thursday afternoon (1:21.715). At the end of a very intense session, just like the Formula 3 session just before, interrupted ten minutes before the end by a red flag after Belgian driver Amaury Cordeel (Rodin Motorsport) went off the track at Sainte Dévote.

When the session resumed, the final laps completely changed the standings, except for Victor Martins who managed to improve his time again to finish six tenths ahead of Luke Browning (HiTech), currently 2^nd in the championship, and one second ahead of Luca Fornaroli, 2024 Formula 3 champion and therefore a very promising rookie at this level.

A member of the Williams Driver Academy, Martins has often been at the front in F2 since his arrival in 2023, on the heels of an F3 championship title in 2022. But he accumulated a lot of bad luck, taking only 5^th place in the championship in 2023 and 7^th in 2024. As a result, he has seen several rivals move up to F1 this year, including his compatriot Isack Hadjar, now a very consistent driver at Racing Bulls, the Junior team for Red Bull.

The current championship leader, Ireland’s Alexander Dunne (Rodin Motorsport), could only manage 8^th place in this session, behind Italy’s Gabriele Mini (Prema), a two-time F3 winner in Monaco and logically promoted to F2 this season. Mini set the 4^th fastest time, ahead of Sweden’s Dino Beganovic (HiTech), another F2 debutant like himself.

F2 qualifying will take place on Friday, for two groups of 11 drivers, between 3.10 and 4.00 pm. This is between the two F1 free practice sessions, and there are still a few places available in the grandstands, at the ACM sales desks at Direction du Tourisme and in Rue Notari, close to the circuit.

Results

📊 Results from the Free Practice session in F2

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📊 Résultat de la séance d’essais libres en F2 #MonacoGP #F1 #F2 #MonacoCircuit pic.twitter.com/WLIANuNVyz

— Automobile Club de Monaco (@ACM_Media) May 22, 2025