“Monaco often brings surprises”, this is what Charles Leclerc said two days ago. On the eve of his home race, the Ferrari driver hadn’t hidden a certain concern over how the SF-25 would perform in the slow corners that characterize the Monaco circuit, though he had left the door open to a glimmer of hope.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer, and it is clearly too early to draw conclusions from a weekend that still has much to reveal. Nevertheless, the first day of free practice did indeed deliver surprises, starting with a Ferrari more effective than expected. This competitiveness also stems from the very elements that, paradoxically, had held it back until now. Compared to other events, such as the recent Miami GP, Monte Carlo doesn’t require such extreme compromises and allows the team to move in a single setup direction.
Slow tracks like Singapore, filled with similar 90-degree corners, or Monte Carlo, allow for fewer aerodynamic compromises, with setups leaning toward high-downforce wings and softer suspension to absorb bumps and attack the curbs.
Although certain traits in the car’s DNA remain unchanged — the SF-25 has so far proven to be too stiff in its effort to maintain a stable platform — being able to run with softer setups has helped find a greater margin of adaptability than on other circuits. Moreover, running on a bumpy street circuit forces everyone, not just Ferrari, to raise the ride height.
However, the main point is another. The drivers felt at ease with the car on the Principality’s streets. Both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton highlighted the good feeling — something rarely seen this season, when more extreme setups led to a nervous car forced into compromises to extract its potential. If the possibility of making fewer compromises helped hide some weaknesses of the car, that does not mean the SF-25 has changed its nature: in free practice, it posted competitive times exactly where expected — in the medium-high speed sections — while still struggling in the slow ones, where the MCL39 single-seater remains the benchmark.
This is clearly noticeable at Tabac and in the Swimming Pool section, one of the few places where cars were seen scraping the asphalt. But that margin isn’t replicated across all medium-speed sections, such as Massenet and Casino, perhaps because those require more front-end work to rotate the car — an area where the SF-25 tends to reveal some of its limits.
Another element pushing Ferrari to the top was its speed on the straights, with an advantage not solely due to traction or wings, but also to engine mappings. While it is true that, generally, Ferrari is more efficient than its rivals, in Monaco McLaren showed up with a rear wing that wasn’t full high-downforce but an intermediate solution, similar to what was used last year in Zandvoort.
Since there is only one DRS zone on the main straight, it is not even a matter of open-wing effectiveness but purely efficiency and mappings: Ferrari seems to have pushed a bit more, gaining about a tenth and a half on the straights. Adding up this straight-line advantage, the competitiveness in the first braking zone, and especially the ability to stay close to McLaren through Massenet, it becomes clearer where that tenth gained in sector one came from.
The difficulties begin where McLaren, by contrast, excels. The lower the speed, the more the MCL39’s mechanical qualities emerge. It’s no coincidence that in Turn 5, Mirabeau, and the hairpin, the gap starts to widen in favor of the papaya-colored car.
But the most interesting insight comes around Turns 7 and 8. Turn 7 is one of those spots where drivers try to cut the inside curb to shorten the route and limit understeer: while the McLaren drivers can be aggressive, the Ferrari drivers opted to avoid clearly cutting the curb, confirming there are still limitations. One of the MCL39’s great strengths is indeed its relatively soft setup compared to rivals, which proves effective especially over curbs and in slow sections, without sacrificing too much in the faster ones. This trait, combined with its high downforce, gives it good versatility. But in free practice, several mistakes were seen, and the drivers themselves admitted they hadn’t put together clean laps.
Realistically, McLaren remains the “silent” front-runner, but it will need something that’s often been missing this season: the ability to put it all together. Because over a single lap, Charles Leclerc doesn’t hold back — especially on home soil. Furthermore, it is likely the straight-line delta will shrink in qualifying, which should bring them closer.
Speaking of rivals, Red Bull endured an underwhelming FP2, partly due to setup choices that turned out to be wrong, causing excessive understeer. On a track like Monaco, where front-end confidence is crucial, Max Verstappen paid the price for this, especially in the slower sections.
In essence, the problems were similar to Ferrari’s, but even more pronounced and without the usual straight-line advantage — pending a power unit ramp-up on Saturday. It will be a topic to follow closely today, hoping for the usual “overnight miracle,” now a staple of their trackside operations.
Further behind was Mercedes, which, after the issues at Imola, chose to take a step back from some of the solutions introduced at the Santerno, starting with the new rear suspension, which was shelved in favor of the previous spec. In their case, the gap increases more linearly throughout the lap, with the most significant losses in the medium-speed sections: there’s setup work to be done.
— see video above —
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