Monaco 2026: One Overtake, All the Drama in the World

One overtake. In two hours of Monaco, a car passed another car on track exactly once — and that was Arvid Lindblad, surfing a wagon-load of pure luck into the points. One move, a fistful of points by the end, and if the red flag hadn't fallen exactly his way it would have been a far less cheerful afternoon for him. By every metric the purists love, this was a dead race.

It was also the most fun my wife and I have had in front of a screen all season.

Kimi Antonelli won it, by the way — lights to flag, utterly in control. I'd genuinely forgotten he won, and honestly nobody gave a damn — and that tells you everything about where the story actually lived.

A race with one overtake and a hundred plot twists

Monaco isn't a race you win. It's a race you survive. And this year the survival rate was comedy.

Hadjar drove a wreck onto the podium

Isack Hadjar spent what felt like sixty laps nursing a broken Red Bull around the houses, collecting what felt like every penalty in the world on the way. Then the stewards quietly dropped the one that mattered — the team had started illegal work on his car under the red flag and then thought better of it — and he climbed out of that mess onto his first podium for Red Bull. P3. Not because he was fast, but because everyone ahead of him found a more creative way to lose.

George Russell got the opposite gift. A five-second pit-lane penalty he couldn't even serve properly — because under the late safety car one half of the pit wall thought they had to sit out the five seconds and the other half thought they didn't, so the crew just went ahead and changed the tyres while George sat there asking the radio whether he was even stopping. The FIA was not amused, and the five seconds became a drive-through that folded his afternoon shut like a cheap deck chair. Two drivers, the same circuit, opposite endings. That's the whole sport in one stop.

Stroll started it, Leclerc had to one-up him

Lance Stroll planted his Aston in the barriers first — first to get bored, evidently, first to decide he'd seen quite enough and head home early. Then Charles Leclerc, apparently deciding the drama wasn't quite sharp enough, repeated the trick almost note for note at the restart — and binned a podium doing it. The FIA pointed at the track surface breaking up at exactly the spot where both of them lost the car. Both drivers shrugged and blamed their own machinery — engine braking, brakes, take your pick. Nobody agreed on anything, which is the most Monaco outcome imaginable.

And the Ferrari heartbreak underneath it all: Leclerc, at home, throwing away a podium car. Rage? An honest mistake? He came out of it sad and furious in equal measure, and you genuinely couldn't tell which one put him in the wall. Piastri, for the record, dragged his McLaren home a frustrated fourth — a podium that was right there and simply never arrived.

Six speeding tickets in one afternoon

And the penalties. Oh, the penalties. Six drivers — six — got done for speeding in the pit lane. Half the grid, near enough, all caught doing the one thing every team has a literal button to prevent.

THE PENALTY BOX · Monaco 2026
Gasly       P3 on the road  ->  P7   (two separate 5s pit-lane penalties)
Russell     5s pit-lane     ->  drive-through, afternoon over
Hulkenberg  10s             ->  for collecting Sainz
Perez       false start     ->  P10 stripped, sent to the back
... and two more for the road. Six speeding tickets in total.

So which is it? Did half the paddock set their limiters wrong on the same day, or did something go sideways on the FIA's side of the measurement? They're usually surgical about this stuff. This time something smells off. Gasly is the one I ache for — he crossed the line third for Alpine and got demoted to seventh by two separate five-second penalties. A Monaco podium, gone, over a handful of km/h.

I haven't even named everyone who got burned. Carlos Sainz — forgot him completely, poor guy, just unlucky from lights to flag. Hülkenberg picked up a penalty for tipping Carlos into trouble. The casualty list reads like a phone book.

The footnotes nobody clapped for

Nearly forgot the best little story of all: the final point. Fernando Alonso, P10 — Aston Martin's first point and first top-10 of the entire 2026 season. Let that land. Their year is so grim that one point, handed to them by someone else's penalty, counts as a party. They will not get this lucky twice.

Then there's Pérez, in a league of his own — only the league turned out to be the losers' one. How do you line up in the wrong grid box, and then fumble the restart, knowing full well you've already been warned? He was genuinely quick — close to winning the loser's cup outright — and then a false start dropped him to the back and stripped his P10, denying Cadillac their first-ever point. Second place in the championship nobody wants.

But honestly? Cadillac keep getting better and the Astons keep getting worse, so my prediction is they level it out at the bottom. And as much as Alonso charms me, it's no comfort — I reckon he and Stroll finish dead last in this loser's championship, together.

What Monaco actually needs

Here's my unpopular take, and my wife co-signs it. People moan that Monaco needs eight overtakes, ten, fifteen, whatever number makes a spreadsheet smile. Others want the V8s screaming back, as if engine noise ever won anyone a race. I could not care less about any of it. Give us drama. Give us a broken car on the podium, two heroes in the same wall, six speeding tickets, and a first point that feels like a trophy.

That is what makes this thing watchable for hamsters like us.

More drama. More spectacle. That's the whole review.