Winners and losers from F1's 2026 Monaco Grand Prix

You'd have been forgiven for watching the first 60 or so laps of the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix and thinking this edition was going to be little different to most of Formula 1's recent races on the streets of Monte Carlo.

But what happened next was Monaco at its brilliant best.

So among the crashes and confusion, and the penalties and post-race fallout, who were the winners and losers?

Loser: George Russell (13th)

On Saturday after qualifying only sixth, four tenths of a second off his polesitting young team-mate and title rival, Russell wondered aloud whether the 2026 Mercedes was just moving away from his driving style - a worrying admission for a driver trying to win the championship in it.

There was less of that talk on Sunday. Then it was all about the bad luck he's had from Chinese GP qualifying nearly three months ago onwards - and he was adamant that he could still take the fight to Kimi Antonelli if fortune was on his side.

Whether it's down to shifting car traits or horrendous bad luck, or a bit of both, Russell isn't just no longer leading the championship he was tipped to dominate - he's down to third.

The confusion over whether he was serving a penalty in his pitstop or not, the fruitless attempt to make some kind of gap for that penalty that succeeded only in creating a midfielder traffic jam that wrecked Carlos Sainz's day... it was all just a mess. More messy, than unlucky, in fact.

Any combination of scruffy execution, no longer being at one with your car, and poor luck can stop you winning an F1 title. A mix of all three is going to be insurmountable.

Winner: Kimi Antonelli (1st)

Remember on Saturday afternoon when Antonelli's pole position looked like it was the result of a brilliant-but-against-the-odds lap in not the fastest car?

Sunday's evidence suggests that the Mercedes might well have been the fastest thing in Monaco after all.

This was a flawless performance: calm, controlled, fast. And even amid the chaos of the closing laps, Antonelli looked assured beyond his years - and an ever-more convincing title favourite.

Loser: Charles Leclerc (DNF)

Crashing out of a podium position (which he firmly put down to brake problems that left him with only one working brake under the safety car, not the crumbling track surface) turned this into a properly painful disaster for Leclerc at home. Again.

But even before that, third at best was going to leave him in the 'loser' category for the weekend given how much higher the expectations were.

This was supposed to be his best win chance of 2026. And if he'd managed to pull off tidy Q3 laps and stuck the Ferrari on pole, maybe Antonelli would have been beatable.

But then maybe Leclerc would have been crashing out of the lead with brake problems and it would be even more heartbreaking.

Either way, it's another one for Leclerc's list of horrible Monaco woe - a list that's much longer than his list of Monaco successes.

Winner: Lewis Hamilton (2nd)

If Ferrari had lived up to its pre-weekend favourite status, this should have been a win - because Hamilton had usual Monaco wizard team-mate Leclerc covered. Well, on pure raw pace, perhaps not. But in execution and managing to deliver that pace consistently, definitely.

If it hadn't been possible to clear the pitlane speeding penalty when he did, this could've been a tale of a second place blown - though third in Monaco wouldn't have been too bad in the context of Hamilton's last few years.

In the end, second behind an unstoppable Antonelli, up to second in the championship, and a generally healthy amount of evidence that the Hamilton renaissance is a tangible thing all adds up to a great weekend's work.

Loser: Pierre Gasly (7th)

We wrote on Saturday of Alpine and Gasly maximising its 'bad days' by getting into Q3 and how important that is for its 2026 ambitions.

But it's even more important to maximise your good days.

And protest all you want about pitlane discrepancies, but this did not represent a job well and truly done on the maximisation front. How could it when a podium went begging?

Gasly's allowed to feel hurt, and Alpine is allowed to disagree with the penalties (and seek a better solution from the FIA). But granting that freedom doesn't make a lost podium any easier to swallow - if anything it's just prolonging the pain.

Winner: Racing Bulls (5th & 6th)

There was a point at which it looked very probably like Liam Lawson would be starting the Monaco GP from the pitlane at best, if at all, and team principal Alan Permane said on Sunday that there were actually problems with both cars before the start.

So you can bet nobody at Racing Bulls would've been predicting its single-biggest points haul since its AlphaTauri days, at the 2021 Abu Dhabi GP.

Lawson had driven a solid race (after a stellar qualifying) before the game-changing safety car/red flag, and while team-mate Arvid Lindblad's ascent might've been a little more down to luck than judgement - the red flag opening up the rare possibility of a zero-stop race - he did make his own fortune with a genuine move on Alex Albon while the Williams driver was busy backing the pack up.

Just like that, Alpine's got competition for fifth in the constructors' championship.

Loser: Max Verstappen (DNF)

The great unknown of this ultimately wild race: what could Verstappen have done if his Red Bull hadn't expired as the race started?

In reality, given Antonelli's pace, Verstappen was probably just set for a fruitless chase of a Mercedes.

But second to Antonelli would have still been his best result of 2026 so far and well worth celebrating.

When all the talk was about Ferrari taking the fight to Mercedes or McLaren's low-speed-corner potential, it was Verstappen who upstaged all the expected challengers and chucked himself onto the front row with Antonelli. And that probably shouldn't really have been a surprise.

Winner: Isack Hadjar (3rd)

Between threats of penalties and repeated technical problems that looked set to put him out of the race, there were so many ways the Monaco GP could've had a miserable ending for Hadjar.

But it was the opposite. A lot had to fall his way to elevate him to the podium, but his driving in the face of constant adversity was immaculate and the final result was deserved.

Loser: Sergio Perez (15th)

It's hard not to feel sorry for Perez and Cadillac at the end of a weekend where there has been genuinely excellent execution.

At the same time, it's hard to have much sympathy for a precious first points finish being taken away for a repeat (if circumstantially different) penalty.

Because the late-race restart was a reprieve for Perez, who'd raced competitively in the midfield in the early laps before his pitstop and subsequent drivethrough, once it became clear he'd lined up in Gabriel Bortoleto's grid slot.

And he was excellent on the restart too: his nimbleness at the hairpin got him ahead of Fernando Alonso (who instead inherited the final point), and the gap he pulled gave him a margin of protection incase anyone else worked their way around the Aston Martin too.

Ultimately, it counts for nothing - just like the claim that there was "no benefit" of being out of position. Rules are rules, and the onboard camera offered a fairly damning verdict of whether Perez had crept beyond his grid box.

What a story that was for a couple of hours, though.

Winner: Aston Martin (10th & DNF)

Aston Martin, Honda and Alonso should take no satisfaction from this inherited point. Especially because it was only inherited from a brand new team that had beaten this supposed superteam on the road on merit.

But given how firmly Aston Martin is mired at the back at the moment, this could be the result that makes the difference between an entirely point-free season and having at least one point on the end of year scoreboard.

So that's...good?

Loser: McLaren (4th & DNF)

Finishing just off the podium behind a Mercedes, a Ferrari and a Red Bull isn't that disastrous by McLaren's 2026 standards.

Given this is the defending champion squad and defending Monaco winning team, though, a weekend of being pretty anonymous all round, running behind an Alpine on the road, and having to retire the reigning champion and 2025 Monaco winner's car mid-race is a flat outcome to say the least.

Loser: Carlos Sainz (DNF)

The clash between Sainz and Nico Hulkenberg looked innocuous enough at the time - albeit coming after an ambitious lunge from Hulkenberg to force his way past Esteban Ocon on the restart, with his resulting trajectory almost certainly contributing to the Sainz contact.

But it's clear Sainz didn't see it as innocuous.

"It's quite impressive that with so much experience around a track like this, that every year it bunches up, people still can do these kind of mistakes," he said.

Understandable ire - because although Williams looked in better shape here, there's no telling just how often points opportunities are going to come around in that tight midfield gaggle.