It was a tense finish in Monaco. At least it was for a brief moment. While the news surrounding the 2026 edition of the Formula 1 race in Monaco is one of tense excitement, it was really a runaway for 68 of the 78 laps. The youngster, Kimi Antonelli, left everyone in the dust immediately. While the rest of the field stayed with him for about three laps, he began to pull away early and seemed never to need to look back. That was until near the end, around lap 60, when the chaos began to take hold.
The troubles began when Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll hit the wall at turn 19 and triggered a safety flag. No sooner than the flag was lifted and the engines revved did Charles Leclerc find his way into the same wall due to a braking issue. After the race, Leclerc commented on the brake problem. “Out of the four brakes, I had three brakes not working. So, in a Formula 1 car, it’s never a good thing.” The two crashes then caused a third flag to go up; the red flag flew so crews could clean and inspect the track.
The restart gave fans a bit of a thrill as the chaos allowed other drivers to catch up to Antonelli, who had spent 3/4 of the race so far out front he could have stopped for a Coke and still came away with the win. While there was a tense couple of laps, the teenager pulled away again and it wasn’t long before it was clear he was just the better man on Sunday.
The hot topic of the day was the penalties. Five drivers, Russell, Gasley, Hamilton, and Colapinto, all got hit with five-second penalties for speeding in the pit lane. Poor Gasley was hit with the same penalty twice. The issue was that it was less about the speed at which the drivers hit going into the lane and more about the angle they took. Hamilton explained after the fact.
“I think it’s just the line that you take, which is the same line we’ve all taken for years, where you come in, you kind of cut part of the white line, head down, went out. And I was shocked to hear that I was speeding because I wasn’t actually above the speed.”
With Antonelli running away with the season already (up on Hamilton by 66 points), it will be interesting to see if anyone can catch up to him and stall his hot streak in Barcelona next week.
