Monaco has become notorious in recent years for soporific races in which the leader controls the pace from the front in an attempt to secure the victory knowing that overtaking is almost impossible.
Last year’s 78-lap race had just four overtakes in total. The average for 2025’s 24 grands prix, discounting sprints, was 66.9.
F1 has taken on a new look this year, with increased levels of overtaking and on-track battles lasting for many laps, with drivers swapping positions repeatedly.
Could this change the character of the race where overtaking is most difficult?
On paper, there are reasons to believe it might. A bit, anyway.
Drivers have complained in recent years that the cars were simply too big – too long and wide – to race effectively in the tight confines of the streets of Monaco.
But the fact that the cars are slightly lighter and smaller this year is unlikely to make a difference.
While the 2026 cars are 10cm narrower and slightly shorter, they are still 10cm wider than the cars of 20 years ago. And overtaking has been all but impossible at Monaco between cars of similar levels of competitiveness for at least half a century.
If anything is going to change the nature of racing in Monaco, it is the new engines, with their nominal 50-50 split between internal combustion and electrical power, and – most importantly – the new overtake mode.
‘Overtake’ gives a driver within a second of a car in front an extra 0.5MJ of electrical energy per lap. This is central to the new character of racing this year and the battles that many in the sport, including drivers, have described as “yo-yo racing”.
Cars have ended up tied together for several laps because the car behind passes the one in front with help from the overtake mode. Only for the advantage to then pass to the car that has just been overtaken, when it gets overtake mode.
It has been proving difficult for drivers to break free of this back-and-forth, and every race this season has had examples of this sort of battle.
No-one knows how overtake mode will affect racing in Monaco until Sunday afternoon. But if it is to make a difference and enable drivers to at least get into a position to try an overtake, this is likely to be in combination with an offset in tyre degradation.
If the car in front is struggling with rear tyre wear, and is therefore limited on grip during acceleration, that, combined with overtake mode, just might make them vulnerable to the car behind.
But the nature of Monaco means that certain aspects of overtake mode will not be in play this weekend.
The plethora of overtaking manoeuvres this year has often been caused by the two cars involved being in different states of energy deployment.
The extra energy provided by ‘overtake’ mode means the car behind can deploy electrical power for longer than the car in front.
So, when one car has an extra 350kW – 480bhp – compared with the one it’s racing, it’s going to get past. This is what has led two-time champion Fernando Alonso to refer to many overtakes this year as “avoiding actions”.
It’s a view shared by Max Verstappen, if expressed in a different way.
This arises because the cars are fundamentally energy starved this year – they simply cannot recover sufficient electrical energy to be able to have full power at all times a driver would want.
Monaco, though, is the least energy-starved track of the year. So this offset in power will be far less common.
