How Formula 1 teams set their cars up for the Monaco Grand Prix

The decisions are somewhat forced on engineers as they seek the optimal set-up for their cars, as Aston Martin Formula 1 Team deputy performance engineer Tim Wright said in our 2025 race preview, because Monaco requires a high level of downforce and compliance from cars through its winding streets.

F1 teams can therefore plan well ahead to tackle the unique challenge of Monaco. Here’s how they do it.

High-downforce packages

Every week, the FIA circulates a list of new parts that teams have declared for the race weekend ahead. In Monaco, those new parts were all circuit-specific: new specifications of rear wing to add as much downforce and therefore grip to the car as possible.

For the 2025 race, every team bar Mercedes declared a circuit-specific upgrade for Monaco. However, many of those Monaco-specification rear wings were already used by teams in 2024.

Williams and Ferrari declared that they carried over their 2024 Monaco rear wings for the following year’s race.

Paul Williams, Williams F1 Team’s chief race engineer, explained: “With the circuit specifics here, with the low efficiency, we've got the largest rear wing on the car. And you're correct, it is a carryover wing which we expect to use at the other low efficiency circuits, so for Hungary, Singapore, you're likely to see this wing again.

“We chose to carry that over in a cost cap world, and where we are in terms of these regulation set, moving to the large change next season in terms of efficiency, we chose to spend our resource time on developing the mid to lower downforce end of the wing range.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella adds that the isochronal ratio, which is the relationship between adding downforce and drag, is low at Monaco. That means adding downforce doesn’t negate the laptime loss of adding drag at Monaco as much as it would at a high-speed circuit such as Monza, where straight-line speed is key.

“It means that you want to add as much downforce and even if this downforce comes with some drag, that's not a problem because here one point of downforce is much more valuable than one point of drag.”

The reigning constructors' champion added a large rear wing and a larger beam wing underneath to add more downforce.

“These elements work in conjunction with the diffuser so they help extract the floor from underneath the car so they work in an integrated way with the floor and overall the car becomes much more powerful in terms of generating aerodynamic grip, which is what you need here in Monaco,” added Stella. 

Suspension and cooling tweaks

The four wheels of an F1 car are rarely always in contact with the track surface at Monaco given its bumpy surface.

Teams might be tempted to soften their suspension to account for the bumps and kerbs at Monaco, but doing so means the car can move around a lot more and become harder to drive as the aerodynamics are disrupted.

Monaco therefore demands a balance between mechanical grip - grip generated between the tyres and road - and aerodynamic grip, which is grip generated by downforce.

Aerodynamic grip is grip generated by the bodywork, and F1 cars need a stable platform to do so.

“Here in Monaco it's difficult to go so close to the ground because you need to run very stiff,” said Stella.

“And if you run stiff, then when you run a kerb, like in the second chicane of the Swimming Pool, then the car will be rigid on the kerbs and then you lose performance because it's too rigid, or when you brake into corner three - the Casino corner - the car lifts a little bit, so you want the wheels to follow the road. 

“And if the car is too stiff you don't follow the road enough, so it's a typical compromise between generating aerodynamic grip by running low and stiff, but having some good mechanical grip with a good ride.”

Teams also modify their suspension arms to allow for greater steering angle, a change necessary to take on the Fairmont Hairpin - the tightest corner in F1. This is where the track drops downhill away from drivers, reducing the amount of contact between the front tyres and the surface and triggering understeer.

Furthermore, at such a low speed through the Hairpin, the car generates less downforce (as downforce squares with speed) and is therefore less compliant through that particular corner.

“Perhaps you can see from here, there's one of the arms that has a little indentation and this indentation is to allow enough of a steer angle, which is what you need to go around [the Hairpin],” said Stella.

“This is traditional, this has always happened pretty much in Formula 1 history, this [hairpin] is a one-off corner in terms of the required steer angle to go around the corner, so you have to some modifications to the front suspension.”

Engine cooling is also a concern for teams as, during the race, drivers are rarely in clean air at Monaco - but it’s a different story in free practice where drivers can wait for an opportune gap to set a flying laptime.

This is another tradeoff; opening up bodywork assures reliability but hampers aerodynamic efficiency and balance. McLaren however improved its cooling system in 2025 and team boss Stella said this has allowed the team to have smoother bodywork than usual at Monaco.

“I'm actually taking this opportunity to stress that one of the reasons why we are quite competitive in very hot conditions, like in Miami for instance, or in Bahrain in practice, is because our engineering group as part of the innovation in the MCL39 compared to last year's car have spent efforts into improving our cooling system.

“There's nothing in the cooling system which is the same as last year. It's much more efficient. This allows us to run closed [bodywork] when the temperature rises, and we talk about a significant amount of milliseconds that we gained compared to last year for a given temperature.”

Strategy analysis

The 2025 Monaco Grand Prix threw up curveballs for the F1 grid as Pirelli brought its softest three tyre compounds to the event and new rules mandated teams to use three different sets of tyres - making this a two-stop race minimum by default.

A change from what is normally a one-stop race to a two-stop affair led to teams and drivers crunching numbers and exploring the various scenarios that could arise: when rivals were likely to take their stops, what the implications of a safety car or red flag would be, whether double-stacked pistols were viable in such a packed pitlane, and myriad other factors.

Drivers spent much of the buildup to the race discussing just how much work was done to prepare for the labyrinth of strategic variations.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri put it succinctly.

“It’s a complicated one. A very complicated one. I think there's a lot of caveats involved. I think there is going to be a lot of gambling on safety cars, red flags, especially if you're not in a high points paying position.

“There's going to be a lot of risks taken because ultimately if it goes wrong, you're not losing anything. It makes it potentially more difficult for the teams at the top, such as ourselves, but it makes it more difficult for everybody, not just one team.

“There's different team strategies that you can deploy. But it's very, very complicated. My head's still kind of untwisting itself from some of the meetings we've had today.”

Mastering Monaco is complicated to what seems an unfathomable degree - but this is where the brightest engineers and drivers shine, and why the top prize at the Principality is so coveted.