Ferrari Formula 1 driver Charles Leclerc topped the opening practice session of the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix.
The reigning Monaco GP winner, Leclerc, had approached the weekend with trepidation given the SF-25's previously documented deficiencies in low-speed corners - and he had a particularly messy start to the session. He also repeatedly complained of the car's handling on team radio.
Yet all the while he ended up the sole driver to dip into the 1m11s margin, doing so on worn C6s and going marginally quicker than his new team-mate Lewis Hamilton had done in the corresponding session last year (while he was still at Mercedes).
The Leclerc/Stroll incident
The eventful FP1 start to Leclerc featured Lance Stroll in a supporting role - though ultimately it was Stroll's session that was ruined rather than Leclerc's.
Before that, the home hero had a lock-up on his very first outlap, forcing him to take to the run-off at Mirabeau and very slowly reverse out of it.
But the Hotel hairpin incident a few minutes later was a lot more consequential. Stroll had hugged the inside line coming into the corner to let Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli past, but - unaware that Leclerc was coming up at speed - darted back to the outside just as Leclerc attacked the corner.
A heavy hit followed, obliterating Leclerc's front wing and forcing him to crawl back to the pits with damage, before a red flag was brought out for debris.
But while the front wing was quickly replaced, the damage to Stroll's Aston Martin was session-ending - the hit forcing a gearbox change. In addition to the lost mileage, he will also have to see the stewards about the incident.
Who looked fast
The two McLarens seemed quickest up to pace, initially running on the soft C6 tyre, but neither found all that much time once swapping to the C5s - this weekend's medium.
Norris never improved at all, with one flying lap on C5s undone by a Ste Devote off and another through straight-lining the Nouvelle Chicane, but his first-set time proved good enough for third anyway - with only Leclerc and Red Bull's Max Verstappen going ahead.
Verstappen ended up 0.163s off the Ferrari driver, and the exact same margin ahead of Norris.
Williams's impressive recent form continued with fourth for Alex Albon and seventh for Carlos Sainz. Slotting in between the two were Oscar Piastri (the only driver in the top 12 to set their fastest time on mediums rather than softs) and George Russell.
It was a busy first Monaco session as a Ferrari driver for Hamilton, who was right at the sharp end in the early going on mediums but was markedly less competitive in the C6 portion of his session.
He at one point drew the ire of Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson by going slowly through the end of the lap (prompting Lawson's race engineer Ernesto Desideri to derisively describe it as "usual Hamilton stuff"), but was then impeded worse himself, having to bail out of a lap after coming up at speed to a pair of rival cars dawdling through Massenet.
He then had a brush with the inside wall in the second part of the Swimming Pool chicane and hopped over the kerb at speed after being redirected by the contact, but was able to avoid any worse damage to his Ferrari.
Practice one results
- Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) 1m11.964s
- Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.163s
- Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.326s
- Alex Albon (Williams) +0.350s
- Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.378s
- George Russell (Mercedes) +0.518s
- Carlos Sainz (Williams) +0.570s
- Pierre Gasly (Alpine) +0.705s
- Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.726s
- Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) +0.763s
- Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +0.801
- Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber) +1.015s
- Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls) +1.223s
- Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull) +1.268s
- Ollie Bearman (Haas) +1,365s
- Esteban Ocon (Haas) +1.430s
- Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) +1.465s
- Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber) +1.506s
- Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +1.873s
- Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) +3.671s
