How Norris ended Leclerc's best 2025 F1 win shot amid Monaco GP 'fun and games'

Essentially, Lando Norris won the Monaco Grand Prix back on Saturday with his superbly composed pole position. Even talking to him before the cars had started running, there seemed an extra calm and assuredness about him, as if he’d somehow diffused the mounting pressure from his sometimes-wayward performances in the first few races as his team-mate racked up four consecutive wins and moved ahead of him in the championship. Was he concerned about the potential randomness which might have been introduced by the new two-stop stipulation for Monaco?

“It’s something I don’t need to be over-thinking,” he said. “Just let whatever happens happen. I’ve been working with the team on my qualifying. I know what I need to focus on. Just takes time and work from both halves. No needless worries.”

Oscar Piastri meanwhile for once seemed the more concerned about things. He’d just come out of the pre-weekend strategy briefing and “I’m still trying to untwist my head,” from all the things he felt he needed to be thinking about. But one thing he did keep repeating, almost like a mantra, was that if you could get pole, you’d have done 90% of the job of winning Monaco, same as always, regardless of the strategic implications. That target of pole seemed to loom very large in his thoughts from a long way out.

Then there was Charles Leclerc, Monaco’s maestro, driving a Ferrari which is invariably great around here even in its less competitive seasons. He and the team kept insisting they probably wouldn’t be quick here this time, given the car’s problems in slow corners elsewhere this season and how this track is all slow corners. It was almost as if he was trying not to allow himself to believe things would be different here because to hope and then be disappointed would be extra painful.

But Friday revealed the Ferrari was indeed fast here. Without the compromises in its set-up needed to accommodate fast corners, it reverted to the very quick car it had been prior to its disqualification for plank wear in China. The suppleness, the easy driveable rotation and great acceleration were perfect for Monaco and Leclerc, who was on an absolute mission once he got those sensations from the car and he’d set the track alight.

Piastri’s preoccupation with pole seemed to lose him his rhythm a little, especially after he crunched the McLaren‘s nose into the Ste Devote tyre barriers on Friday. He always seemed one step behind after that, his progress a little more ragged, his left-rear wheel nudging the barriers a little too often. So it came down to a gunslinger’s shoot-out between Norris and Leclerc and it was Norris’ final push-cool-push sequence which hit the target to the dismay of Leclerc. If he was going to win anywhere in what otherwise looks set to be a difficult season, it was surely here – and now he’d lost out on pole at the track where it’s more important than anywhere else.

Which is indeed how it played out. The struggle between McLaren and Ferrari at the front was quite a conventional one despite their fears that the race would be randomised by safety cars or yellow flags before they’d got their tyre stops out of the way. There were some unusual strategies further back, but up front, Leclerc chased Norris, with Piastri watching on a couple of seconds back. Ferrari pitted Lewis Hamilton from seventh (where a three-place grid drop for impeding Verstappen had left him) quite early so as to ensure he overcut his way past Fernando Alonso‘s Aston (which later broke it PU) and Isack Hadjar‘s Racing Bulls. This created the space for Norris to drop into on the following lap, so getting one of his tyre changes out of the way. He’d created a three-second gap over Leclerc, who stayed out a few laps longer.

McLaren tried to undercut Piastri past Leclerc but he suffered a two-second delay with a rear wheel in the pitstop, so preventing McLaren from being able to fully control the challenge of Leclerc, who stopped three laps after Norris and rejoined still close behind.

The lead trio had all started on the medium tyre. Verstappen in fourth had started on the hard and so ran longer. The hope was a safety car would come to his aid as the Red Bull temporarily led the race. But none came. He ran eight laps longer than Norris and rejoined still fourth, well behind Piastri.

But fun and games were playing out behind the top three teams. Racing Bulls’ Hadjar had qualified a great sixth fastest (fifth after Hamilton’s penalty), with team-mate Liam Lawson ninth. The Kiwi had immediately begun lapping up to five-second off the pace, creating a great queue of cars behind. This allowed Hadjar the space to make two early, closely-spaced, pitstops on laps 15 and 19 to get both tyre changes done, without losing places to the pack. Hadjar was running sixth with all his stops done before the faster cars ahead of him (apart from Norris) had even made their first stops.

Lawson then ran until lap 31, with all those queued behind (including the Williams and Mercedes teams) knowing they’d be losing a load of positions if they had tried stopping before him, so closely had he bunched the field.

Once Lawson finally pitted, it released Williams to employ an even more extreme version of the same strategy, with Carlos Sainz this time playing the Lawson role to let Albon escape to make two stops nine laps apart without losing position. Once Albon had done that, he in turn released Sainz and held the pack off his back, returning the favour. That put the Williams ninth and 10th, behind Lawson. Through qualifying an excellent eighth (crucially, ahead of Lawson), Esteban Ocon‘s Haas had been able to avoid being in the big slow queues and so was now seventh between the two Racing Bulls.