Despite the new rules mandating a two stop strategy, qualifying well at Monaco remains integral to a good result. Always an outlier in term of characteristics, given its tight, twisty turns and the lowest average speed of all the tracks on the calendar. Who is best placed to capitalise and take the victory or stand on the podium?

McLaren

McLaren have been solid in most situations so far this year, they have a car that works well in a range of different corners and track layouts, but qualifying execution has been a massive problem for them. Lando Norris has been affected more by some of the characteristics of the MCL39 under braking, but Oscar Piastri has also noted how tricky it can be to extract all the available lap time from the car when pushing flat out. At Monaco, with easily the highest pressure qualifying session of the season, where the tiniest of mistakes can put you in the barrier. This will be the hardest test yet for both Norris and Piastri.

Red Bull

Excluding Australia and China, the Red Bull has been mighty in qualifying. Although it frequently didn’t have the race pace to back it up, at Monaco that shouldn’t be as much of a factor. Upgrades in Imola that Verstappen said had the car feeling “a lot more together”, will be tested in a very different environment this weekend, and a positive response to a track layout that doesn’t necessarily suit the natural strong points of the car will be vital. Assuming Max Verstappen puts up another stellar qualifying performance as he has done consistently this season, with his Red Bull car starting to shift to his liking, and the potential for the McLaren drivers to stumble, he’s likely to be there or thereabouts.

Mercedes

Another good all rounder, they lack the peak downforce of the McLaren but have certainly produced a more compliant and predictable platform than the ground-effect Mercedes cars that came before it. Surprisingly, if you had to put money on which of the Mercedes drivers could take a shock pole in Monte Carlo, your best bet might be the rookie Kimi Antonelli. He’s been very strong in the slower corners compared to his teammate George Russell, and provided he keeps it out of the barriers could be one to watch.

Ferrari

Given their results in the last few races, Ferrari certainly aren’t one of the favourites for the win coming up to the Monaco GP weekend. In fact they could be looking at another weekend of damage limitation as the slow corners that are a staple of the track have been an Achilles heel for the team so far. The third sector of the Miami International Autodrome, and sequences like turn one and two in Jeddah, are slower sections of tracks where both Ferrari drivers leaked massive amounts of time relative to their competition. Both Leclerc and Hamilton have produced some magic around this circuit in the past, but even if they can channel some of that this year it’s not likely to be enough this time round.

Williams

Williams have a car that’s been fairly consistent over a range of track layouts so far this year. The one area that has been a problem for them is front-locking into slow corners. This characteristic has been carried over from previous Williams cars, and although it has been somewhat dulled down from past iterations it still remains one of the major limitations for the drivers. Mitigating this problem with a good setup from the outset will be key to a good result for the them. Confidence is key at Monaco and if the drivers can’t trust their brakes in FP1, building that confidence back up in subsequent sessions will waste crucial time coming up to qualifying.

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