So this weekends race at Monaco saw a grand total of 0 (zero) overtakes, placing the race in an exclusive club alongside Russia 2017, USA 2005, Monaco 2003 and San Marino 1994. Monaco has always had a reputation for being very difficult to overtake at and this more often than not coincides with an underwhelming race in terms of excitement. As someone who has been collating F1 overtaking data I might be able to offer some interesting insight.

A few quick notes

• The races without an ‘on TV’ figure in the spreadsheet are races I have not yet watched back and the figure is based on lap charts, pit stop data and through reading race reviews… The data will be in the right ball park but not as accurate as I can get them.
• For the 2021 race, I do not include overtakes on lap 1 (So Schumacher on Mazepin would not count), and as for the Vettel/Gasly battle on the pit lane exit, Vettel was ahead the whole the whole way from the safety car line until he was a fully ahead at Massenet so I have not considered it as an overtake. For more on how I calculate overtakes see the FAQs page.
• For the record I do not believe more overtaking = more exciting races. I do believe there is a correlation but there is certainly not a causation. The main thing the data can show is how easy or difficult it is to overtake and what circumstances make it more easy or difficult.

Analysis 1 – How does Overtaking Tend to Happen at Monaco

It is not impossible to overtake it is just very very difficult is a common theme when it comes to overtaking at Monaco. In this section I will outline in what circumstances overtakes do happen at Monaco from both the data and my own experiences watching races over the years.

1.1. Wet Weather – I deliberately put weather info in the Monaco data as many of the wet races in Monaco stand out like a sore thumb in the data. Particularly 1982, 83, 84, 97, and 2008. It’s long established that wet weather provides more opportitunity for overtaking, the cars are travelling slower (less dirty air), more mistakes are made (leading to more chances) and changes between wet and dry tyres can mean large differences in speed between cars and therefore more overtakes. However this is largely irrelevent in terms of improving overtaking at Monaco as it’s rather difficult to organize the weather.

1.2. A fast car at the back – Maybe if Ferrari were a bit more circumspect we could of seen a bit of this yesterday. Anyway, there have been a number of occasions where a fast car has found itself at the back behind much slower cars, either through an incident in the race or a bad qualifying session. One such incident was in 1993, Alain Prost received a 10 second stop/go penalty for jumping the start and found himself at the back, he proceeded to make 12 overtakes to make his way back to third (naturally the TV director missed all but one of them). More recently Verstappen found himself at the back in 2018 and made all the overtakes seen in that race, same with Alonso in 2010. So reverse grid might be an obvious answer but I think the race would have a lot less value when say Nicholas Latifi ends up winning it.

1.3. Tyre Degradation – You need a massive difference in speed to Overtake at Monaco and one of the easiest ways to produce differrences in speed is through tyre degradation. At Monaco it needs to be particularly extreme, there have been a few races where this has been the case. In 2005 the Renaults really struggled with tyre deg and found themselves going backwards, Alonso had two very exciting battles with the Williams cars and Fisichella got overtaken by well pretty much everyone. 2006 also saw high tyre deg and during the pit stop phase, where there were cars on fresh tyres and cars on worn tyres, between lap 39 and 44 there were ten overtakes in the midfield (the TV director missed virtually all of them), which is a lot for Monaco, and there might have been more if there weren’t a safety car shortly after. 2009 saw a number of overtakes early in the race (particularly on Vettel) as cars struggled on the soft tyre but once they switched to the hards overtaking dried up. 2011 and 13 were in what you might call F1’s high degradation tyre era and saw high numbers because of it, there might have been more in both year’s if it weren’t for the red flag incidents that happened in both races. I have an idea in how F1 can use high tyre to make better races at Monaco below.

1.4. Notably Slow Cars – It’s much easier to overtake very slow teams like Forti, Minardi and HRT than it is anothers. In many races the numbers are padded out with overtakes on slow teams. An example would be 2015 where 8 of the 10 overtakes were on the Manors of Stevens and Merhi.

1.5. Lick the stamp and send it – When you think of many of the overtakes at Monaco, it is often just a driver putting all their eggs in one basket and just going for it. It worked for Leclerc twice in 2019 but not a third time, or Sutil in 2013 and 14 or Bianchi on Kobayashi also in 2014. They’re very exciting when they happen but there is a huge amount of risk and drivers will too often prefer to just stay in line and take their points, there is just too much risk.

Analysis 2 – Why does Overtaking not happen in Monaco

In this section I will outline why we don’t see so much overtaking at Monaco and also consider some reasons I’ve seen put forward by many fans.

2.1. The Circuit – Ultimately it comes down to this, there is no other track like Monaco and there is no other track where overtaking is as difficult as it is at Monaco. The longest flat out section is just 650 metres between Portier and the Nouvelle Chicane, I think generally you want about 900 metres to be reasonably confident of overtaking but this is fairly anecdotal I admit. There are flat out sections of similar distance where we do see overtaking. Take T6 at Shanghai for example, we’ve seen many overtakes here and the flat out section before it is just 630 metres. But you have to consider the context of the preceding corners as well; for T6 in Shanghai drivers can take different lines through turns 1-4 get a better exit and set themselves up for T6. Back to Monaco, Portier is very much a one line corner and the driver behind can only get an advantage on traction, will struggle more with dirty air and won’t be able to take a better line. The run from Mirabeau to Portier doesn’t help either, stop start nature tends to cause field spread and is multiple events of cars having to take the same line as the car ahead, there is a similar problem in sectors 3 at Barcelona, Sochi and Abu Dhabi. I’ll discuss the narrowness of the track when I get to discussing the width of the cars.

2.2. They can’t get close enough anyway – In this years race I don’t think I ever saw a car even get within half a second of the car infront. You can talk about the cars being too wide or the track too narrow but that’s not relevant when cars can’t even get in the position to make a move in the first place. You really need to be right under someones gearbox to make a move at Monaco and no-one was ever close to that this year. The data shows a very clear drop in overtakes since the more aero dependant and wider cars were introduced going from 10 in both 2014 and 15 to 3,4,2 and 0 in 2017, 18, 19 and 21 respectively. Increased dirty air can definitely be considered a clear factor here, i’ll get on to the wider cars later. I should also refer back to the point I made in section 1.4, we currently don’t have any very slow cars which doesn’t help the post 2017 statistics… If Manor weren’t racing in 2015 there would have only been two overtakes that year.

2.3. The Three Tyre Rule – I just don’t think it works at Monaco (and i’m starting to thinks it’s run its course generally). The option of the hard tyre just gives the teams an easy conservative option to go to the end of the race and protect what they’ve got. As discussed earlier you need a large difference in performance to overtake and with that conservative option available the necessary difference in performance to overtake does not even come close to happening.

2.4. The Risk – You take a lot of risk when you go for a move at Monaco and so many times it has gone so very wrong. So essentially, why even bother trying? Lets consider one of the closer ‘battles’ we saw in this years race which was Giovinazzi on Ocon for 9th. While yes Giovinazzi was faster than Ocon but Gio was in 10th and on course to score both him and his teams first points of the season, why throw it all away for just one more point? It might be the less exciting thing to do but it’s often just best to sit back take what you’ve got.

2.5. Playing the Strategy Game – We saw it this year and we’ve seen it in many other years. In the first phase of the race drivers will just sit 1.5 to 2.5 seconds behind the car in front and see how the gaps play out and take the opportunity on strategy when/if it comes. Strategy is definitely the best way to move up the order as we saw with Perez gaining 3 positions. However most fans want to see overtaking take place on the track.

2.6. The Cars are too Wide (+ Formula E just had an Exciting Race at Monaco and their cars are Narrow) – This is the argument I think I see more than any other. Remember when the 2017 regs were introduced and everyone seemed to be excited that we were getting big fast wide ‘proper’ racing cars with massive tyres… I sometimes feel like I’m the only one who still is. I might get a bit of pushback for saying this but I honestly do not think that the current width of the cars has a huge impact on overtaking. Firstly overtaking figures are still relatively high (outside of Monaco) despite these cars the 2018 19 and 20 seasons all had higher/similar average overtakes per race than 2015 , a season with narrower cars and of the hybrid, DRS and tyre deg era.

An increase in dirty air isn’t solely down to the introduction of wider cars. The 2017 changes also gave engineers much more scope for aerodynamic design freedom. Refering back to section 2.2 (and 2.1), width isn’t even that relevant if you can’t get close enough to begin with.

The track’s too narrow the cars are too wide but you could make the circuit twenty metres and it wouldn’t make much difference to overtakes. Why? Circuits have an effective racing width there are places on a race track no matter how wide it is you’d just never race on. As long as cars can physically go side by side with a bit of room for manouevre you can race there. The circuit is 10 metres wide at the Nouvelle chicane so there’s five car widths to play with. It’s still tight and a slightly wider track would improve things. However, I think the lack of length in the approach and the slight kink on the tunnel exit, causing reduced sightlines and easier defensive positioning, are a greater problem than the width of the cars or track here.

The cars have also been just as wide and even wider in the past. Many people have forgotten/never knew that prior to 1998 the cars were also 2 metres wide and prior to 1993 they were even wider at 2.2 metres wide. In the narrow track era (1998 to 2016) at 1.8 metres wide overtaking has been pretty similar really, the 2000, 03 and 07 races were very similar to this years with cars never really looking like overtaking was going to happen. Obviously if the cars were say 3 metres wide, width would be a major problem. But the other factors mentioned above are a much greater factor in overtaking being difficult at Monaco than simply the cars being 20cm wider than they were five years ago.

Lastly, I’ve also seen many people saying things like ‘Formula E has narrower cars and just had an exciting race at Monaco so F1 cars should be narrower as well.’ There is a lot more factors as to why FE find overtaking easier at Monaco than simply the cars are narrower. First of all they’re a lot slower, 20 seconds a lap slower, and that means less dirty air, field spread, corners being single line and so on… Also there is a lot less risk overtaking in Formula E, the cars a designed to withstand are lot more punishment from contact than F1 cars are. In FE drivers can tactically play with energy levels and when to regenerate energy, plus attack mode, to generate greater performance difference between cars to try and overtake. FE uses all weather tyres which look awful drive on but help keep cars closer together. The qualifying system FE have also tends to put faster cars at the back, many feel it’s a bit gimmicky, but it certainly allow for more overtaking opportunities. There’s also fanboost but i’d rather pretend that doesn’t exist. Thats a lot of reasons before we get to the width of the cars. Sorry for going on about people going on about the width of the cars it’s just a bit of a bugbare of mine.

3. What we could Change for the Future

3.1 Sack the Sodding TV Director – Monaco is the only race not directed by FOM and it shows. I nearly through the remote at the TV when they cut away from the Vettel/Gasly battle. They’ve been missing overtakes and not showing the right action for years. The FOM direction is not perfect but I’m 100% confident they would do a better job.

3.2 Change the Cars – I think the racing at most circuits is currently very good but could be better. The changes coming for 2022 are being made with the intention of alleviating many of the problems the cars currently. Will it change much at Monaco, maybe a little bit. I don’t think there’s much point in designing cars just for one, very unique, circuit. It would be a bit of a waste of resources to be frank. The main problem with racing at Monaco is Monaco.

3.3 The Circuit – Redesigning the circuit at Monaco is very limited with buildings and the sea being major obstacles. One fairly easy change that could be made is turn left just before Portier and go round the roundabout. This would mean the flatout section from Portier to the chicane would increase by 50 metres to 700 metres. The new Portier would also be a wider more rounded corner that could allow cars behind to set themselves up better for an overtake. It would still be difficult to overtake but you would expect it to be a little easier.

A more a radical idea would involve a little bit of land reclamation (which has been done before). If you reclaim some land on the inside of Tabac you could move the chicane forward making a flatout section of 900 metres all the way from Portier from to Tabac. You could also add a DRS zone from the exit of the tunnel. My idea would look something like this . There is of course problems with this idea, chiefly less space for parking yachts and also the cost of land reclamation.

3.4 My Radical Tyre Rule Idea – As I mentioned in section 2.3 the current tyre rules just don’t work at Monaco. I’ve seen many people mention the idea of only bringing the soft tyres, which I think would improve things but teams will all likely pit halfway through the race and be on tyres of similar where rate. To get the massive differences in tyres to overtake at Monaco you’re gonna have to get even more radical.

My idea is to only allow tyre changes in the first 20 laps and the last 20 laps of the race. Also only soft tyres allowed. In this idea teams would effectively have the choice of going short or long on strategy. There’ll be massive differences in pace by the end of the race some drivers will be on completely shot tyres and other on very fresh tyres. Teams would have a choice of going short, pushing as hard as possible early in the race to get a gap to pit and using the undercut to get track position on cars going long and trying to defend at the end from cars on very fresh tyres. Or they could go long (maybe benefit from a safety car) and see what they can do with a massive tyre advantage at the end. Teams would be required to do a thirty lap stint in practice sessions to make a worn set of tyres available mid-race incase of a puncture. Team strategists would probably find holes this idea but I think you’re more likely to get an entertaining race this way than with the current tyre rules. I will admit this is quite gimmicky though.

Conclusion

I do honestly like Monaco but it is a tested relationship. I’d rather not have to watch a repeat of this years race in future Monaco grand prix. Monaco is in many ways F1’s blue ribband event and an event where many casual or brand new fans will check out F1 and more often than not they will get a very lacklustre event. You will rarely see F1 at its best on a dry raceday at Monaco and I think any ideas to improve racing at Monaco are worth considering. So long as they are not to the detriment of the other races, Monaco would likely need unique changes. If races at Monaco were to be a more exciting event I have little doubt it would benefit the sport as a whole. Oh… and sack the TV director.