31 May in Ferrari history: Gilles Villeneuve’s Monaco victory
May 31 in Ferrari Formula 1 history
Explore Ferrari Grand Prix results, qualifying and Sprint sessions, driver birthdays, remembrance dates and selected milestones connected with this day.
Ferrari Grands Prix held on May 31
Ferrari qualifying sessions on May 31
Race, qualifying, Sprint and Ferrari driver biographical dates are generated from the locally processed F1DB dataset. Session anniversaries are shown only when an explicit session date is available in the source. Selected non-race Ferrari milestones are curated separately from Ferrari sources. Historical shared-car result rows are preserved without inventing additional Grand Prix starts.
On 31 May 1981, Gilles Villeneuve won the Monaco Grand Prix for Ferrari. Driving the turbocharged 126 CK, the Canadian secured the team’s first victory of the season on one of the calendar’s most demanding circuits.
A front-row start on the streets of Monte Carlo
Gilles Villeneuve qualified second, only 0.078 seconds behind Nelson Piquet’s pole time. That placed the Ferrari on the front row despite the challenges of controlling an early turbocharged Formula 1 car around Monaco’s tight corners and close barriers.
The race brought changes at the front, including Nelson Piquet’s retirement. Gilles Villeneuve eventually emerged as the winner, finishing ahead of Alan Jones and Jacques Laffite after 76 laps.
The final margin over the Williams was 39.910 seconds. Didier Pironi finished fourth in the second Ferrari, giving the team two points-scoring cars at the end of an attritional afternoon.
The first of two memorable victories in 1981
Monaco began a short but remarkable winning sequence for Gilles Villeneuve. He also won the next championship round in Spain, producing two successive victories during Ferrari’s first full season with turbocharged power.
The Monaco result remains an important part of that story: a strong qualifying performance followed by a race-winning drive in demanding surroundings. Explore Gilles Villeneuve’s Formula 1 records or return to the Ferrari history calendar.
