2025 Monaco GP winners and losers: Pit stop rules backfire, Lando Norris back on top, Mercedes’ disastrous weekend, and more

On Sunday, May 25, F1 returned to the Monaco Grand Prix, the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ event famed for glitz, glamour and roaring engines on the streets of Monte Carlo. 

With the introduction of two mandatory pit stops, there was hope that the 2025 race would provide a better racing spectacle than years prior, but with team games up and down the grid, many drivers and fans alike were ultimately left disappointed. 

Sports News Blitz’s F1 writer Henry Eccles takes a look at the five biggest winners and losers to come out of the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix. 

Losers: F1 fans 

It may be the crown jewel, but the Monaco Grand Prix was once again a tough watch for F1 fans. 

In 2024, despite home hero Charles Leclerc’s emotional win, the race was heavily criticised by fans and drivers alike for not being much more than a procession, with overtaking virtually impossible on the narrow streets in bulky modern F1 cars. 

To make this year’s event more exciting, drivers were required to make two mandatory pit stops during the race for the first time ever.  

”No, it didn’t work,” said Mercedes’ Russell post-race. 

“It was too easy for drivers [and] teams to work together to create the pit stop-gap, invert the cars, [then] the next driver creates the pit stop-gap and gives their teammate the free stop.”

Russell revealed that it had been Mercedes’ plan to implement the same sort of strategy, but since both Racing Bulls and Williams had already done it further up the grid, the Silver Arrows’ hopes of points quickly disappeared. 

It was a strategy that earned Williams a double-points finish in P9 and P10 for Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz respectively. 

During the race, however, Team Principal James Vowles even admitted to Sky Sports F1: “This isn't how I like to go racing but that's what the rules have created. From my position, this is a difficult afternoon."

Albon went as far to apologise to fans watching the race: “I know we put on a bad show for everyone, and that we made a few drivers behind us angry in the process as well. Apologies to everyone who watched that, it wasn't very good.”

Sainz himself expressed similar disappointment with the Grand Prix and race weekend in general.

“It shows the two-stop change is nothing around Monaco and people are still going to do what we did today. People are still going to manipulate the final result with the driving.

"It is not the way I like to race or how I dream about racing around Monaco."

Winner: Lando Norris 

Without a win since the season-opener at Melbourne, Lando Norris needed a special weekend. 

On Saturday, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc looked like he had pole position in the bag at his home Grand Prix once again, but the McLaren driver had other ideas.

Setting a Monaco lap record of 1:09.954, Norris finished 0.109s ahead of the Monegasque driver to take his first pole position since Melbourne, making up for mistakes he has previously made in the latter parts of qualifying this season. 

On Sunday, with the opening corners at Monaco, the most important to get right - and race starts being the Briton’s biggest weakness - Norris kept Leclerc in his mirrors despite locking up heavily into Turn One. 

The 25-year-old kept the net lead throughout the whole race, at a track where even the slightest mistake will see you into the barriers. 

In the late stages, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, in the lead but yet to make his second mandatory pit stop, ramped the pressure up on Norris by backing him into Leclerc, but the McLaren star held his nerve to take the win. 

After the race, Norris said: 

"It's a long, gruelling race but good fun. We could push for quite a lot of the race, the last corner was a little bit nervous with Charles close behind and Max ahead but we won in Monaco.

“I had an amazing weekend with pole, today, this is what I dream of. This is what I did dream of when I was a kid so I achieved one of my dreams."

Meanwhile, his team-mate Oscar Piastri had a messier weekend despite finishing P3, typified by his Lap 43 slide at Turn One, where his rear left tyre grazed the Sainte-Dévote barriers.

The championship leader eventually caught up to the back of Norris and Leclerc, but with the streets of Monaco being so narrow and modern F1 cars so wide, there was never any real hope of him getting past. 

After what may well be the most important yet, Norris’ victory means he is back on level pegging with the Aussie for career wins, and is now only three points off his P1 position in the Drivers’ standings. 

Losers: Mercedes

Monaco was a complete disaster for Mercedes from start to finish. 

On Saturday, neither George Russell nor Kimi Antonelli were able to make Q3 - the first time a Mercedes has not featured in the final qualifying session in more than three years.

In Q1, Antonelli went too tight into the Nouvelle Chicane, knocking his front left tyre off the barrier and crashing into the wall - an accident that left him in P15 come Sunday’s race.

In Q2, with ten minutes to go in the session, Russell lost power and, despite trying his best to get going again, the Brit had to stop in the Monaco tunnel - leaving him just ahead of Antonelli in P14. 

With overtaking almost impossible at Monaco, Mercedes were fighting a losing battle from the start, and had to think outside the box to have any hopes of points. 

What followed was a bizarre strategy - with both drivers on the hard tyres, Mercedes went long in the hope of a Safety Car or Red Flag that ultimately never came. 

As both drivers got stuck behind Williams’ Alex Albon, Russell became so frustrated that he accepted taking the penalty that came his way for cutting the corner to get past the Thai driver. 

The penalty in question, however, was a drive through the pit lane, meaning he still had to pit twice under the new Monaco rules.   

Therefore, Antonelli then had to slow down to let Russell get his stops in without losing positions, but that led to the young Italian having to pit on laps 69 and 71, which saw him cross the line P18.

And after all of that, Russell still missed out on the points in P11, the first time Mercedes have failed to score a point since Round One in Melbourne. 

While they still hold on to P2 in the Constructors’ standings, the Silver Arrows are now just four points clear of Red Bull, and only five ahead of Ferrari.

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Winners: Racing Bulls

It was by no means pretty, but Racing Bulls pulled off the best strategy in Monaco, made possible by an excellent qualifying performance.

Isack Hadjar qualified in P6 but was moved up a place thanks to Lewis Hamilton’s grid penalty following an impeding incident with Verstappen, while Lawson started in P9, his first Q3 finish of the season.

And during Sunday’s race, the Racing Bulls’ plan to stay in the points quickly became very clear.

From P9, Lawson began to back up the drivers behind him, forming a big enough gap to allow his team-mate ahead to have his mandatory pit stops and suffer minimal time losses. 

Although he lost a position to Hamilton, the strategy saw Hadjar cross the line in P6, his best finish in F1 yet. 

It was also a career-best finish for Lawson, as despite having to play the team game, he still managed to gain a place and crossed the line in P8. 

The double-points score was Racing Bulls’ first in Monaco since 2019, and moved them ahead of Aston Martin into P7 in the Constructors’ standings.

"It was a perfect weekend for me,” Hadjar said post-race.

"Honestly yesterday I had a lot of fun, a lot more fun than today, but still the race was perfectly executed.

"Liam helped me massively, it was great teamwork and also, he helped me, but he also got points so I'm really happy for him."

Loser: Fernando Alonso

Much like at Imola last weekend, it was initially all looking so promising for Fernando Alonso at Monaco. 

The Spaniard was heard telling his race engineer ‘I love driving’ as he qualified P7 on the Monte Carlo streets, and he started the race P6 after Hamilton’s penalty. 

Staying out of trouble at the start, Alonso was running comfortably in the top six before disaster struck midway through the race in the form of engine issues. 

On lap 38, the two-time world champion had to stop at Rascasse, but later revealed he had been experiencing issues since Lap 15. 

“I didn’t have the ERS system, the electrical part…so I had 160 horsepower less,” Alonso said. 

“But, here in Monaco, power was not crucial, so I kept the lap time reasonable, and I think I was dreaming of keeping the P6 at the end, maybe, but it was not possible.”

While Alonso was certainly unfortunate with the timings of the Safety Cars at Imola, calling himself the ‘unluckiest driver in the world,’ this weekend he claimed luck did not have much to do with it.

“It’s not something that came from the sky and hit our car. We were our own Safety Car today, our engine was not well prepared for the race, and we could not finish.

“So let’s try to investigate that and make sure that it’s not happening in the next race.”

After eight rounds, the result at Monaco means Alonso is one of four drivers still without a point in F1 this season, his worst start to a campaign in 10 years. 

Next up, F1 returns to the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona for the finale of the European triple-header - fans can catch all the action on Sky Sports F1 between May 30 to June 1, with the race set to start on Sunday at 2pm UK time.

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