In the end, it was an 81st Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco with no surprise, apart from the first lap, and no suspense until the 78th lap, everything having been settled in advance. It all came down to tea time on Saturday, when qualifying was of a very high standard. And 24 hours later, Charles Leclerc was able to climb onto the top of the princely podium that he had dreamed of since he was a child. He will forever be the first Monegasque to win a Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco, and he deserves it.

On the podium, with the princely family surrounding him, Charles the Victorious was accompanied by his new best friend, Oscar Piastri (McLaren), and his future ex-teammate at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz. Everyone was very moved, as was Frédéric Vasseur, the main architect of the Scuderia’s revival which nobody can doubt any more. Throughout the weekend, there was not a single mistake from the men in red, who had ruined, in the pits, Leclerc’s two previous pole positions in the Principality.

Charles Leclerc: “I never believed in a curse [in Monaco]”.

Even the crazy first lap of this 81st Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco didn’t faze or destabilise them, and they calmly put Sainz’s Ferrari back in shape at the end of the first lap, when a red flag brutally interrupted proceedings for three quarters of an hour. This was due to a collision with potentially dramatic consequences between the Red Bull of ‘Checo’ Pérez and the two Haas cars of Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg, who had started from the back of the grid.

Sainz had a tyre punctured by a rival at the start, so he missed braking entering the Casino section. A few seconds later, on the descent to the Fairmont, Esteban Ocon flew off the front wheel of his Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly. That was a lot of incidents for a first lap, there were carbon debris everywhere, so the race direction wisely decided to stop everything, giving time for everyone to recover.

A new start

When the race restarted for 16 of the 20 drivers at 3.45pm, some were on hard tyres (the first four) and others on medium tyres (in the chasing pack), nobody knowing which was the best solution. And then nothing happened, because Leclerc set the pace, very slowly, that was needed to preserve the tyres right to the end. And nobody behind the Ferrari, not even the McLaren drivers, tried to reverse the course of this inexorable victory, awaited by all the people of Monaco.

It was a logical and well-deserved victory, meticulously prepared by the entire Scuderia team, and there could be many more to come. It is only Charles Leclerc’s 6th win in F1, two years after his previous one (Austria 2022), but it brings the Monegasque back to 31 points of Max Verstappen. The three-time reigning world champion took 6th place in this uneventful race… after a first lap worthy of “Fast and Furious”. The race ended with the top ten on the grid in the top ten places overall.

There are still 16 Grands Prix to be contested in 2024 and anything is possible, including a duel between Verstappen and Leclerc for the world title. We cannot wait for the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal in mid-June!

Race final classification