29/05/2024
NEWS STORY
Fans will be happy to hear that they weren't the only ones bored by Sunday's snooze-fest... so was world champion Max Verstappen.
"After the red flag our strategy was ruined," said the Dutchman, who ended the afternoon exactly where he'd started, in sixth, "as we had to put the medium on to the end as everyone had a free stop, and that meant that we had to save a lot.
"I just tried to follow George and we were so off the pace trying to manage the tyres," he added. "That is of course quite boring out there, driving literally half-throttle on the straights in some places, a gear higher than you would normally do and four seconds off the pace, so that is not really racing."
Indeed, days after Lewis Hamilton suggested Monaco would benefit from a revised format, Verstappen agrees.
"I would like to try to - if there are possibilities - change a few things," said the Dutchman. "because it'll make the excitement even better.
"Overall the weekend is really cool," he added, "just the Sunday is a little bit boring unfortunately, but the scenery is still great. If we can find a way to race a bit better, why not? That would be my preferred solution."
Asked about changes to the layout, which wouldn't be easy considering the size and layout of the actual Principality, he said: "Yes, because you cannot pass at the moment. If they ask for my opinion I will try to see what is possible, but it also depends what roads you are going to take."
"It was a very static race," agreed Christian Horner. "The top ten is as it started.
"The red flag effectively killed the race," he continued, "because everybody just was going to run to the end of the race.
"It's something that we should collectively have a look at," he admitted. "It's not racing as such when you're just driving around three or four seconds off the pace because the other car hasn't got any chance of overtaking.
"Monaco is such a great place to come racing. But the cars are so big now that we just need to look at 'can we do something that introduces an overtaking area' or at least the potential of an overtake because the top ten is exactly as it started on the grid and not a single overtake in the top ten.
"It's such a great place, so much history here, but everything evolves. The cars are so big now, if you compare them to cars of ten years ago they're almost twice the size."
Great history and scenery, but the 'racing's' crap... welcome to F1 2024 folks!
Check out our Sunday gallery from Monaco here.