Winners and losers from Monaco GP F1 practice 2026

Monaco Grand Prix practice offered strong evidence that this weekend could be Mercedes’ first defeat of the 2026 Formula 1 season.

Not that Mercedes had a particularly miserable time - unlike some others we’re about to mention in our Friday winners and losers list…

Winner: Ferrari (1st & 2nd)

Ferrari delivered on its pre-event status as favourite with a 1-2 in both practice sessions, Charles Leclerc heading Lewis Hamilton in FP1 and with the positions reversed in FP2.

It had a clear pace advantage over Mercedes and McLaren, but a less decisive advantage over Red Bull. But there's nothing to suggest that it doesn't have the potential to repeat that performance and lock out the front row in qualifying, assuming Ferrari does its homework overnight.

That homework will include making Leclerc happier with the brakes, but the fact Hamilton eclipsed him by 0.111s in practice gives Ferrari reason to believe it has two drivers capable of putting it on the front row in a car that was always, on paper, well suited to Monaco thanks to its mechanical strengths, slow corner performances and responsive turbo. - Edd Straw

Loser: McLaren (7th & 19th)

Lando Norris’s FP2 ended when he crawled to a halt at the exit of Nouvelle chicane early on but Oscar Piastri’s times did little to reassure McLaren.

The Australian was one second off the pace in FP2 - between Isack Hadjar’s Red Bull and Nico Hulkenberg’s Audi.

Compounding those worries is the fact that Piastri was over 1.5s behind in FP1 and Norris was 1.3s off - with Hulkenberg between them.

McLaren’s bumper haul in Miami now looks a distant memory, given its woes in Canada. If it continues like this in Monaco, Ferrari could pull further ahead in their constructors’ battle. - Samarth Kanal

Loser: Isack Hadjar (6th, but crashed too)

Having matched Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen’s one-lap pace through the Montreal weekend, Hadjar put himself on the back foot in Monaco with his big FP1 shunt. 

A quick repair job from his Red Bull mechanics (including some help from Verstappen’s side of the garage) meant Hadjar still bagged 24 laps in FP2, but it was still valuable confidence lost.

Hadjar said: "I wanted to build the confidence back up again [after] we missed a bit of the early laps."To be honest it came right at the very end, I had a better feeling in the car but still not exploring all the limits, so yeah there's a lot of work to do.”

The one bit of solace Hadjar can take is that he had a couple of wall hits during practice last year and went on undeterred to a brilliant qualifying and grand prix performance. 

Doing so against Verstappen, though, will be far trickier, and if the Red Bull is a pole position-challenging car this weekend, any intra-team deficit will look more galling. - Josh Suttill

Winner: Max Verstappen (3rd)

Monaco was never Red Bull’s strongest circuit in the ground effect era, even at the height of its domination. 

But Verstappen started this Monaco weekend with one of his most impressive Fridays of the year, third in both FP1 and FP2, and only 0.168 seconds off the pacesetting Ferrari in the latter. 

Of course, Red Bull isn’t getting ahead of itself after only two practice sessions. Red Bull’s chief engineer Paul Monaghan predicted qualifying will be "squeaky tight” after FP2.

But it appears the circuit profile of low-speed corners and less dependency on power unit, has given Red Bull and Verstappen a chance to spring a surprise on Saturday. - JS

Loser: Mercedes (4th & 5th)

This is a tad controversial but is simply a consequence of the incredibly high standards Mercedes has set for itself so far in 2026.

Fourth and fifth at this stage of the weekend is by no measure terrible, but it’s comfortably Mercedes’ worst FP2 result of the season so far - and the gap to the front is the biggest it’s faced too.

But even though George Russell has 0.379s to find and championship leader Kimi Antonelli finished FP2 half a second off the pace, such is the nature of the Monaco weekend that both will feel they are still in the mix - if they can make a step on the soft tyre in FP3 and beyond.

It was interesting to see the Mercedes fall off the pace after the soft tyres went on, considering Antonelli in particular looked more of a threat to the top of the leaderboard on mediums. 

Verstappen's was probably a bit of a hero lap in the Red Bull, whereas the pace looks like it's coming much easier for Ferrari. Hamilton and Leclerc just look so comfortable on every lap they turn here, so if they each maintain that groove - and the Ferrari wasn’t running massively light or overpowered on Friday compared to its rivals - then this could genuinely be the first time in 2026 that Mercedes faces being knocked off the front row of the grid. - Ben Anderson

Winner: Audi (8th & 9th)

The midfield in FP2:

6 Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) +1.061s 
7 Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +1.062s 
8 Nico Hulkenberg (Audi) +1.068s 
9 Gabriel Bortoleto (Audi) +1.333s 
10 Ollie Bearman (Haas) +1.430s 
11 Pierre Gasly (Alpine) +1.471s

Audi has the ‘best of the rest’ title, but Hulkenberg was actually within touching distance of McLaren’s Piastri and Red Bull’s Hadjar in FP2. That was after he split the McLarens in FP1.

Team-mate Gabriel Bortoleto was a couple of tenths adrift in FP2 and FP1, although there was nothing concerning for the Brazilian - and that pace would still put him in the hunt for points.

That would be a welcome change for Audi, which hasn’t actually scored since the opening weekend. 

The only caveat is that Norris bowed out early for McLaren, hence his absence from the top 10. - SK

Loser: Valtteri Bottas (21st)

Valtteri Bottas has brushed off rumours that he was at risk of losing his Cadillac seat, but he did little to assuage worries over his performance on Friday.

The Finn was seven-tenths off his team-mate Sergio Perez in FP2 and 1.2 seconds off in FP1. 

That is indeed concerning, and the kind of deficit that would be hard to blame on engineering alone. Bottas has it all to do on Saturday. - SK

Winner: Sergio Perez (18th)

At face value, 18th in the order in an FP2 session he ended early, parked up at the side of the road with smoke coming from his car, doesn't look like an awful lot for Perez to be excited about.

But there's genuine promise there, as Perez acknowledged on Friday afternoon: "We know if we find a few tenths, we change our lives."

Perez has been convincingly the fastest of the 'back four' all day, and even though 14th in FP1 was flattered by a tyre offset to the rest he looked in the groove right from the start of that session. He backed out of a faster lap too in FP2 that should at the very least have rivalled Haas driver Esteban Ocon's time ahead.

And that has to be the target for qualifying on Saturday: nail everything, and it does look like an Ocon, one of the Racing Bulls drivers, or maybe even a Franco Colapinto are there for the taking.

These are small milestones, but with Perez in the form he's found it's never been more realistic for Cadillac to expect its first Q2 berth. - Jack Cozens

Loser: Aston Martin (20th & 22nd)

The focus in some quarters of the press on Thursday was of this being Aston Martin's chance to spring a surprise, and Fernando Alonso's 2.268s deficit in FP2 does suggest it's at least closer here.

But that's where the positives end really. Because it's still being upstaged by Cadillac here - and Perez probably had a little more in hand than the 0.178s gap between him and Alonso on the timesheet suggested - and Alonso's big fear coming into the weekend, of downshifts causing rear locking, and the car ending up in the wall, has come true.

"Definitely not yet" was team representative Pedro de la Rosa's blunt reply on whether Aston Martin could see light at the end of the tunnel. "A little bit of everything" was Alonso's reply to being asked about the problems that had made the car look a handful.

"It seems that we have this chronic understeer that we cannot solve," he added.

And however big a role Aston Martin's plight is playing, it's clear Alonso is not enjoying his experience: "This is probably the worst generation of cars I ever drove in Monaco."

So yes, if this really is meant to be Aston Martin's one real shot at respectability early in 2026...then it really might be a long time until the end of the tunnel comes into view. - JC