On track overtakes

Perhaps the most simple measure of whether the rule change worked is whether or not the number of on track overtakes increased – and the short answer is that it didn’t.

There was just one overtake on track for position over the 2025 race, which was below the average number of overtakes for dry races in Monaco since 2015 (3.43 overtakes). In recent years, rain affected races (in blue) remain the ones that have seen the most overtakes with 22 in 2023 and 13 in 2022.

Assessing the success of this new regulation through the number of on track overtakes could be unfair however, as a) this wasn’t really its intention, and b) the chance of overtaking in Monaco is incredibly limited even with tyre life offsets due to factors such as car size and track layout.

It could therefore be better to look at changes of position for each driver on where they started, however this came about.

Changes of position

The 2025 Monaco Grand Prix saw 10 drivers gain places on where they started and 6 lose places. Two drivers DNF’ed, meaning they accounted for one third of the drivers who lost places on their grid spot by the end of the race, but this also of course meant that any driver who was running behind them gained places when they dropped out of the race.

For the purpose of this data, the positions lost with a DNF assume that a DNF is position 20, even if multiple drivers DNF’ed. This is an inherent weakness of this method, but where drivers aren’t classified this simplifies the approach. For example, this means that if a driver started P20 yet also DNF’ed, they’d be classed as having lost no positions.

With that in mind, let’s deep dive the data.

On average for the 2025 race, a driver who gained places did so by 2.8 positions, while a driver who lost places did so by -4.83 positions. Over all gains/losses, each driver made an average of -0.05 place changes from their grid spot to their finishing position.

Comparing this to 2024 reveals that while there was a smaller average position change over all drivers this year than last (-0.3 places), this year we did see more drivers gain and more drivers lose.

In 2024, just 3 drivers gained places on where they started and 4 lost out on where they started, with three of these ‘losers’ being drivers who DNF’d.

A driver who gained places did so on average by 3.0 places and a driver who lost places did so by an average of -3.75 places.

This year we also observed that the driver who made up the most places, Ollie Bearman, did so by moving from P20 on the grid to P12 by the flag to a total of 8 places gained. This is double that of the driver who gained the most last year, Valtteri Bottas, who made up just four places from P17-P13.

So what can we conclude from this?

Well firstly, the new regulation gave rise to more overall position changes from the starting to the finishing order. While yes, 2024’s grand prix could be said to be as much of an anomaly as 2025’s due to the fact that there were no pitstops beyond the early red flag and this year we had a race with ‘artificially’ added pitstops, one aim of this ‘artificial’ change was to increase position changes and it generated a clear improvement according to this metric even so.

Playing the game

A significant part of getting the most from this new regulation change was not being afraid to play the game it demanded, and one team did this especially well – Racing Bulls.

Although Isack Hadjar had done a large part of the hard work on Saturday by achieving a P5 grid position, Liam Lawson’s P9 qualifying result was arguably equally as important in allowing the team to execute their strategic plan.

With Lawson running ahead of both Williams cars, he was given the instruction to begin ‘managing his tyres’ as they had discussed pre-race, or in other words, begin to back up the pack.

Although post-race he said this was harder than he expected, he successfully created a gap ahead of him big enough for his teammate Hadjar to pit into and only lose one position when he came in for the soft tyre on lap 15.

With Hadjar’s first stop complete, Lawson repeated this technique to create yet another 20 second gap for Hadjar to box and move onto the hard tyre that he would take to the end.

But by running this team strategy from the off, Racing Bulls forced Williams into doing the same to defend their own double points finish which allowed Lawson two free pitstops himself. Once all the stops had played out they were able to secure a P6 finish for Hadjar and P8 for Lawson – the team’s best joint result since Brazil 2024, and Lawson’s first points of the year.

As Hadjar himself described, it was a “perfect Sunday” for Racing Bulls, but above the impressive execution and result for the team it was a display of what this new regulation demanded whether the teams liked it or not.

And while it worked out well for Racing Bulls, Williams and Mercedes found themselves in tricky situations after having to resort to these tactics too.

Being backed up first by the Racing Bulls and then by Sainz and Albon too left Russell frustrated, and left Mercedes looking to switch their strategy from playing this team game themselves to running as long as possible. With two stops still to make and no chance of overtaking the Williams, Russell ran over the Nouvelle Chicane to get around Albon and said that he would take the penalty for doing so.

This did not go down well with the stewards, who issued Russell with a drive through penalty to discourage any driver from being tempted to do the same. They outlined in their report that the teams had been informed by the Race Director prior to the race that any deliberate leaving of the track at this chicane to overtake a car/train of cars would be looked at “carefully”. Given that Russell’s infringement was clearly deliberate as indicated by his radio at the time, they elevated the penalty.

But the positive of this was that it released Russell into clean air and allowed him to make his two stops and still finish in P11 ahead of Antonelli, who dropped to last (P18) when he did the same.

Even towards the front, variation in strategy between Verstappen and the McLarens/Leclerc resulted in some jeopardy over whether Leclerc would risk a move on Norris for the win, whether there would be an intervention (safety car/red flag) to grant Verstappen a chance at the victory, or whether Piastri would catch to put pressure on Leclerc to relieve Norris.

Whether or not this increased action through the pit lane and strategic planning from the teams constitutes an “improvement” in the Monaco spectacle is subjective, but objectively there was a lot at play than the 2024 race, be it positive or negative, as a result of this regulation shift.

Pace differentials

Another way the new regulation could have affected the way the race ran was through creating big enough pace differentials or tyre deltas between drivers/teams to allow for overtaking or position changes through the pit lane.

Looking at how the teams and drivers ranked for race pace, we can see just how much this possibility was confounded by the team tactics and ‘slow’ driving that were at play throughout the field.

The average pace of the top three drivers was separated by just 0.018s, which increases to just over two tenths over the top 4 when Verstappen is included. From Hamilton backwards though, we see a rift appear which is demonstrative of how the field behaved over the race. Every driver except this top five was lapped at least once, with this pace difference reflecting very clearly in this chart.

For the drivers who backed others up/were victims of this backing up, we see very little variation in their pace as they were driving to a similar delta of between 3-5 seconds off the pace of the front runners. This includes Lawson, Hadjar, Albon, Sainz and Russell but also Alonso and Ocon who were caught up in these antics and benefitted from Lawson giving them each a free stop as he worked to do this for Hadjar.

Further back, others like Hulkenberg, Antonelli, Colapinto and Tsunoda all suffered as a result of either poor starting positions, traffic, or both which impacted their pace and meant that, for example, Tsunoda’s average pace was 2.910s off Verstappen’s.

Pirelli’s Verdict

Aside from these various metrics, what was Pirelli’s verdict on a race that so largely relied on the tyres, particularly as they provided the C6 on a track that it was initially intended for for the first time?

In terms of tyre use, we saw all three compounds at play with the C4, C5 and C6 being used for stints of varying lengths over the field. The teams’ use of each compound was hugely impacted by their approach to using their 13 sets of tyres per car up to the race, with Red Bull, Racing Bulls and Sauber drivers all being left with single sets of mediums and hards heading in. This meant they would always have to run the soft through the race, but how this was done varied per team and driver.

Tsunoda, for example, ran the soft for just a single lap at the start whereas Hulkenberg, ran the soft for a huge 32 laps.

The medium and hard featured predominantly as was expected, but comparing the strategy diagrams from this year’s race to last year’s shows how differently the teams went about this use this year.

Mario Isola, Pirelli’s Motorsport Director, was keen to highlight how the regulation not only spiced up the discussions surrounding what could happen on a Sunday in Monaco – something that is not typical there – but it also resulted in “five changes of leader, with three different drivers involved, while behind them there was plenty of action, certainly more than usual, and more than we saw last year for example”.

Isola also spoke to the difficulty of creating overtaking action in Monaco, and said that even if fans “were not majorly entertained” they “were certainly not bored” and that “this is Monaco, take it or leave it: qualifying that leaves you with your heart in your mouth and a race where overtaking is almost impossible.”

Whether you agree or not, it could be important to ask whether we are expecting too much from Monaco?

Is it okay to accept it as an event where a different form of racing can be seen, where strategy and defending your track position are critical as a result of one of the most thrilling and anticipated qualifying hours of the year?

The answer to this will largely depend on how you enjoy Formula 1, which of course varies individual to individual, but maybe expecting a revolution from adding an extra pitstop per driver was never realistic.

What the new regulation did was create intrigue, discussion, and interest at a race that has previously largely been decided on a Saturday afternoon, which perhaps was always its intention.