Lando Norris won Monaco from pole in a race with almost no passing

Lando Norris won the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix from pole position, three seconds clear at the flag. It was McLaren's first victory at the Circuit de Monaco since 2008, and the first at the circuit for Norris himself. The result also cut his gap to Oscar Piastri to three points.

What was the championship picture before Monaco?

Piastri topped the drivers' table on 146 points before the race, 13 clear of his McLaren team-mate Norris and 22 ahead of Max Verstappen. In the constructors' standings, McLaren had 279 points, comfortably ahead of Mercedes on 147 and Red Bull on 131.

The event was the eighth round of the season and the 82nd time the circuit has held an event in its history. For Norris, a win in the Principality offered a way to close the gap at the top of the standings.

At Monaco in 2025, the pit wall mattered more than the passing.

How did practice set the scene?

Charles Leclerc topped all three free practice sessions for Ferrari, but none of them ran smoothly. The first was red flagged after Leclerc hit Lance Stroll at turn 6, and two red flags came in the second session from crashes by Isack Hadjar and Oscar Piastri.

The third session was red flagged in its closing stages after Lewis Hamilton crashed at turn 4 and ripped a front-right tyre off his Ferrari. Hamilton had been third in the second session, behind Leclerc and Piastri, while Verstappen and Norris were in the top three in both the opening and final sessions.

Which drivers were in the seats?

The grid was mostly the season entry list, with two changes. Yuki Tsunoda took over the Red Bull seat that Liam Lawson had been using, and Lawson would be moved to Racing Bulls for the Japanese race and beyond. Franco Colapinto had replaced Jack Doohan at Alpine from the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, on a rotating basis until at least the Austrian Grand Prix.

Pirelli's C4, C5 and C6 were the three softest compounds in its range. They were the options teams had at the event, labelled hard, medium and soft in that order.

How did qualifying shape the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix?

Norris took pole with a lap of 1:09.954, the fastest ever recorded at Monaco. Qualifying was stopped twice by red flags, first when Kimi Antonelli crashed at the Nouvelle Chicane and then when George Russell's battery failed in the tunnel. Lewis Hamilton and Oliver Bearman both took grid penalties.

Antonelli's time from before his crash was still enough to reach Q2, but he did not run a lap there. Bortoleto, Bearman, Gasly, Stroll and Colapinto went out in Q1, and Sainz, Tsunoda, Hulkenberg, Russell and Antonelli followed them in Q2.

Stroll also took penalties, but they made no difference to the final order because Bearman's ten-place drop had already moved him down the grid. The win was Norris's second of the season, following his first since the season-opening race in Melbourne.

Why did so few cars pass each other?

Monaco's twisting layout, lack of straights and narrow track left almost no room for overtaking. The race produced only one overtake, and none inside the top ten. Mercedes worked out that a car would need to be 4.5 seconds quicker than the one ahead to have a 50-50 chance of passing it.

Tactics filled the gap that the track left. Several teams held a driver back so that a team-mate could pit in clean air, and Sainz and Albon later said they understood the need to block rivals for tactical reasons, even though they disliked it.

The two-stop rule and how teams worked around it

The rule set a minimum of two pit stops in both wet and dry conditions, and each car had to run at least three tyre sets. Dry races also needed two different compounds. The rule was meant to promote better racing, but it soon produced its own tactics.

Williams, Racing Bulls and Mercedes each ordered one driver to hold up the field so that a team-mate could pit without losing track position. Isack Hadjar was the first to make it work. On lap 14 he became the first driver from the top ten to come in, and Liam Lawson deliberately slowed the cars behind so that Hadjar could rejoin ahead of them. Hadjar made his second stop five laps later.

Max Verstappen tried a different route. He stayed out on old tyres and gambled on a pit stop under a safety car or red flag, when he would lose less time against his rivals. No free stop came, and he was forced to pit late in the race, dropping him to fourth.

How the race unfolded

Norris made a slightly poorer start than Leclerc, who momentarily challenged him into the opening Sainte Devote turn. Norris held the inside line and kept the lead, and the field settled down behind him.

Further back, Gabriel Bortoleto overtook Kimi Antonelli round the outside of the Fairmont Hairpin. When Antonelli tried to respond on the inside at the Portier turn, Bortoleto hit the barrier and lost his front wing, dropping to last. A virtual safety car followed while marshals cleared the debris, and Yuki Tsunoda, Pierre Gasly, Oliver Bearman and Bortoleto used the period to take their stops on the first lap.

On lap 9 Gasly braked too late for the Nouvelle Chicane and ran into the rear of Tsunoda. The impact knocked his front-left wheel loose, which ended his race, although he managed to return to the pits under his own power. Verstappen, fourth at the time, closed up on Oscar Piastri but could not pass, and complained over the radio that Piastri had almost taken his front wing off.

Lewis Hamilton made his first stop on lap 18 and overcut Hadjar and Fernando Alonso, moving from a net seventh to fifth. Norris pitted on lap 19 without incident, switching from mediums to hards. Verstappen, who had been running long in the hope of an overcut on Piastri, stopped on lap 28 and rejoined fourth.

Alonso, running sixth, lost his engine on lap 37, which ended his chance of scoring for the first time this year. He coasted off through a gap in the barriers, which meant no safety car was needed.

On lap 50 George Russell passed Alexander Albon by cutting the Nouvelle Chicane. Russell said Albon had been driving erratically, and he refused to give the place back, saying he would rather take a penalty than stay stuck behind the Williams. The stewards responded with a harsher than usual drive-through penalty.

Norris made his second and last stop at about the same moment, which put him behind Verstappen with one stop still in hand. Verstappen delayed as long as he could in case a safety car or red flag arrived. Norris caught him quickly but could not get past, and the gap to Leclerc fell to as little as half a second at one point. Norris held on, and Verstappen finally stopped on lap 77, and Norris retook the lead.

Norris set the quickest lap of the race on the last tour and won by three seconds. Leclerc and Piastri took the other two podium places, and both Racing Bulls drivers scored their best Grand Prix results to that point.

Who gained and who lost on the day?

Norris gained the most, winning from pole and holding off Charles Leclerc even when the gap shrank to half a second. Isack Hadjar finished sixth and Liam Lawson eighth, both career-best finishes at that stage. Verstappen lost ground with his late stop and finished fourth.

Piastri kept the championship lead, but the gap to Norris had shrunk to three points. Alonso's engine failure ended the race for a driver still searching for his first points of the year, and Gasly's race ended on lap 9 after the collision with Tsunoda.

Race at a glance

What did the drivers and team bosses say afterwards?

Norris said the two-stop rule had turned the race into more of a lottery without making it more competitive. Carlos Sainz Jr. and Alexander Albon admitted they understood why they needed to block rivals for tactical reasons, though they disliked the practice. Sainz warned that blocking would become more common at Monaco unless the rules changed again.

Max Verstappen joked that Monaco might need Mario Kart-style gimmicks to hold attention. George Russell revived Bernie Ecclestone's old idea of sprinklers as an artificial hazard.

Christian Horner felt the two-stop rule added drama without changing much, and he urged changes to the track itself to create more natural passing. Andrea Stella agreed the rule had not worked, but was uncertain whether the track could be changed in a meaningful way. Toto Wolff proposed a minimum lap time, which would stop teams deliberately crawling round.