Monaco arrived at the 2026 weekend carrying a promise. The new-era cars were supposed to run wild on the streets, the FIA had banned the active-aero straight-line mode specifically for this race, and after years of complaints the principality was finally meant to be fun again. Kimi Antonelli then led every lap from pole to win his fifth race in a row, becoming the youngest driver ever to do so. That is exactly the kind of front-running procession Monaco's critics always point to. So did anything actually change?
Depends who you ask.
Kym Illman, who spent the weekend shooting the race from inside Port Hercule, came away a convert. "The Monaco Grand Prix is a terrible race. It's a procession. It's boring. I will never watch it. I read so many comments like that on social media," he said. "And yet today, it just blew everybody out of the water." His argument leans on the circuit rather than the regulations. He relayed a conversation with 1996 world champion Damon Hill, who pointed out that Monaco punishes the smallest error in a way no modern track does: a mistake that costs half a second at Melbourne or Austin ends your race against the barriers here.
The BBC's commentary team was just as energised by the finish. "My brain's still fried from those last 10 laps," lead commentator Harry Benjamin said on the Chequered Flag podcast. "What a Grand Prix that was." His colleague, F1 correspondent Andrew Benson, framed the day around Antonelli rather than the spectacle. "The superlatives just keep coming for this young man," he said. "He's answered all the questions. This was an absolutely perfect weekend on every level." Benson noted that George Russell had arrived trying to play psychological games with his teammate and "within 48 hours or so was admitting that he was struggling to keep pace."
Not everyone bought the hype. On the P1 podcast, hosts Matt and Tommy, watching trackside, were blunter about what they actually saw. "It feels like even though it was processional for a lot of it, we've got quite a few topics," one noted. They argued the entertainment came from attrition, not racing. Max Verstappen's engine died as the field pulled away, crashes pitched cars into the walls, a late red flag bunched the order, and a run of penalties reshuffled the result. "We expected just kind of lights to flag, normal, nothing happening," they said. "And at one point it generally felt like anyone could be on the podium based on all the penalties that were going on."
That tension is the whole debate. The drama was real, from Verstappen's lap-one retirement to the crashes to Pierre Gasly crossing the line third only to lose the podium to a pit-lane penalty. Almost none of it, though, came from one car passing another on merit. Antonelli was never headed.
So the honest answer sits between the camps. Monaco 2026 was a genuinely gripping watch, and the unforgiving walls did exactly what Hill described. But the cars built to run wild still could not overtake here, and it took chaos, not the new formula, to make the race a classic. Whether that counts as fixing Monaco is an argument that will run all the way to next year's entry list.
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*Originally published on [Newsformula One](https://newsformula.one/article/monaco-2026-verdict-did-the-new-cars-fix-f1s-dullest-race). Visit for full coverage.*
