In a 24-race season, events need to have something unique that sets them apart from the others on the calendar. Night races, street tracks, high speed historic venues – it’s not quite the IndyCar road, street, and oval combination, but there is a huge amount of variety. The Monaco Grand Prix will always be special for what it provides prior to the actual race. I’m not talking about parties on yachts or visits to the famous casino, but the mere sight of cars on such a crazy circuit, even in a practice session. The knowledge that there is likely to be someone who makes a mistake and ends up in the wall makes for compelling viewing on its own, but the skill of the drivers adds to the impression the place leaves.
Qualifying Day at Monaco: The Most Important Day of the Year
Moving on to the main event – qualifying. I know, there’s a strong argument to be made that a race should not be secondary to the method of setting the grid order, but there really is nothing like Saturday at Monaco. It’s always been the most important qualifying session of the year because if you start on pole position – or in other cases simply higher than your car’s true race pace – then you know all you need is one good launch off the line, a clean pit stop, and 95 percent of the job is done. The other five percent for a driver is down to maintaining their focus because they can drive well within themselves and not lose track position.
Monaco Qualifying: The Thrill of the Chase
Monaco, this weekend, already served up exactly what makes it so good, with a thrilling qualifying session that saw pole position up for grabs until the final laps, incidents, and surprise eliminations. Mercedes will be rueing the way things panned out after seeing Kimi Antonelli crash and end up 15th, and then George Russell suffer a reliability issue and drop out just one place ahead of his teammate. But those moments can happen to anybody, and they carry so much more weight when track position is everything. It’s that jeopardy that makes the good results all the sweeter because teams and drivers know how easily it could all go wrong. Even the most experienced driver on the grid still feels the tension.
Fernando Alonso on Monaco: The Most Interesting Part of the Weekend
“Always in Monaco, Saturday is the most interesting part of the weekend,” Fernando Alonso said after qualifying in the top 10. “We know that Sunday is a bit more boring. Maybe now with the two stops there are possibilities tomorrow, but normally Saturday here is very special, or the most special Saturday of the year. “I really enjoyed it, trying to push a little bit more in each session. Especially Q1 was very stressful with the traffic. We were outside the top 15 until the very last lap, so a lot of stress, but it tasted good.” Four-time world champion Max Verstappen might have qualified ahead of Alonso, but he was less satisfied with Red Bull’s competitiveness. That’s another thing about Monaco – it can be a leveler as certain cars that are usually quick are less strong. For all of his dominant spells and years with a front-running car, Verstappen has “only” two victories here, after all.
