What the F1 drivers think of potential Monaco GP track changes

As drivers prepare for the Spanish Grand Prix weekend, there were still lingering questions in Barcelona relating back to the Monaco Grand Prix and how best to improve the racing spectacle in the Principality.

After the introduction of two mandatory pitstops failed to produce any noticeable uptick in entertainment this year, former racer Alex Wurz pitched in with three ideas to alter the circuit and aid overtaking around the narrow streets of Monte Carlo.

Now a number of current drivers have had their say on Wurz’s proposals, with Autosport rounding up the best of the responses.

Charles Leclerc

“I think it’s interesting. I honestly don’t know all of Alex’s ideas. I’ve seen something very quickly on social media, but I don’t even know if it’s the full extent to what he proposed.

“I saw like three modifications of turns, which I think was very, very interesting. Maybe the one Turn 10 that he proposed to run on [into] the sea is a bit more tricky to achieve, but the two others I think are good ideas. Is it going to significantly change the action on Sunday in Monaco?

“I honestly don’t think so. Do we need to make absolutely every possible effort to make it better on the Sunday? Definitely.

“But Monaco has always been like that and I think there are more and more talks also because now there are social media and there’s a platform to share opinions, which is a good thing in many ways. But it makes a lot more noise than it used to do in the past. And Monaco has always been the kind of race where the Sunday not much is happening or a lot less compared to other races.

“But qualifying in Monaco is unbelievable. I think as a driver, it’s really, really special and that’s what makes Monaco so special. So again, I will welcome any changes to make it better on the Sunday. But Monaco has always been like that.”

Pierre Gasly

“I’ve seen it. I think at the moment we need to be quite open-minded in what could be done. I think, first of all, next year is going for 1.80m cars rather than 2m. Side by side you’re looking at 40cm difference, so it is better. It’s just going to bring it back to what it was a couple of years ago. Looking also at Formula 3, you still see it’s extremely difficult [to overtake], so I think they need to have a look at widening some of the areas of the track.

“I’m not too sure. I’m not the one that’s going to find a solution. I think we just need to have a group of people looking into it and putting proposals on the table and just having a look at what’s better. But being on a track like that also, when you’re able to have lines where you can brake on the inside and move back to the other line, underbraking, is also helping. There are many things here I’m sure we can have a look at.”

Esteban Ocon

“I think Alex has great ideas. Every single time we look at things with him, he’s got the racing driver eye, which is a very good thing. I think it would definitely go in the right direction. Would it be enough? Probably not. But I think he stayed on the realistic side, which is a very good thing. I think the best thing would be to have no chicanes and run it until Turn 12.

“But we need some run-off at Turn 12 to hope for an overtaking, have the DRS just after the tunnel and keep going flat out all the way to the end. That would be probably the best thing. But, yeah, looking at what Alex has done, it’s probably the most realistic thing that we can do. It would go in the right direction. Probably not enough, I would say.”

Alex Albon

“I think they’re very sensible. I think half of the issue is that it’s braking downhill and it’s bumpy into that chicane, so it’s really hard to be that committed on the brakes to overtake cars, so that idea of having 80 metres and following it down the track to a braking area that would be flat would give drivers far more confidence, to say the honest… You’ve seen it, but as soon as you brake late, when it’s going downhill, when you add pitch to a car, which is then downhill, so you add more pitch, you create all this extra rear limitation in the car, and that’s when you get these big crashes where cars lose the rear.

Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team, Alexander Albon, Williams

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

“Another thing, maybe, I don’t know if F1 would ever consider this, but we do DRS into Turn 1, in China and in Japan. We’ve done that, and it’s up to us to manually switch it off. I know they’re not really for these things, but if we had control over the DRS, it’s up to us.

“If we want to take the risk to use DRS through the tunnel, then we can turn it off when we get through the corner and open it back up again as we exit. It could help as well. So I think there are some things we can try or at least talk about.”

Carlos Sainz

“He suggested three minor changes to, I think it was Loews. Like one option was the chicane after the tunnel to delay the entry and maybe make it a bit tighter, a bit further down the road. He made Loews wider, the entry of Loews wider.

“And then he made the entry of Rascasse tighter. Those three changes. My opinion, that would help, but it would help [with] 1-5% of the issue that we have. I think you could still position the car in the middle of the track. Go 30kph and still not get overtaken. You would need to be a bit clever about it.

“You would need to be more worried, maybe looking in the mirror in case someone sends one on the inside because it’s a bit wider. But the cars are so wide that you can basically go as slow as you want, that they’re not going to pass you. So that’s why I was driving, why we were driving for five seconds off the pace.”

George Russell

“Monaco has always been the same. I think I have seen some of the proposed track changes that definitely will not make it worse, because the small problem you have in Monaco is the one overtaking opportunity, which is out of the tunnel. The natural racing line is you’re going from the left, braking through the middle of the track, and then you pull over to the right.

“So it’s very easy for a driver to position his car. But I honestly, right now, I don’t have the answer. Maybe the manual override would be a solution. But part of me just thinks we need to accept Monaco for what it is.

George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

“Formula 1 is better by having Monaco on the calendar. It is the most exhilarating qualifying of the season. And the race is always pretty boring, but it also makes us appreciate the other races as well. So I don’t know, to be honest.”

Oscar Piastri

“I think the only way you can encourage overtaking at Monaco really is by changing the track in some way, shape or form, or making the cars half the size they are. They are getting smaller next year, but they need to be a lot smaller. Maybe we should just have a go-kart race around there, that might help.

“But I do think tweaking the track is the only real thing. Having more pitstops is obviously not going to change it as we saw, so I think that’s the most realistic route. But there’s also not that much space to do that either, so I don’t have any great ideas, and when you’re qualifying at the front and you’ve got a quick car, it’s alright the way it is.”