Event
How F2’s Monaco feature race exposed the track’s biggest technical challenge
by Josh Suttill
7min read
Formula 2’s most iconic weekend of the year in Monaco was turned on its head by what drivers and engineers called some of the toughest outlaps they’d ever seen.
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Warming up the tyres - given tyre blankets are banned in F2 - is always a tricky challenge for drivers when they have fresh rubber bolted on during the mandatory feature race pitstop.
Drivers need to have their tyres in the optimal temperature window to find peak grip. Consequently, their first lap out of the pits must be driven aggressively enough to put that necessary heat into both the tyre carcass and the tread.
But Monaco is arguably the hardest track on the F2 calendar for generating tyre temperature, for a multitude of reasons:
• Lack of Braking Zones: Primarily, there aren’t many heavy, sustained braking zones for drivers to generate heat and effectively push the tyres into the right operating window.
• Track Conditions: The circuit turns back into public roads the night before. The track is cleaned overnight, stripping away much of the grip-enhancing rubber laid down earlier in the weekend.
• Time of Day: The F2 feature race takes place at 9:25 am local time, meaning ambient and track temperatures are significantly lower.
As Rodin driver Alex Dunne explained: “If we were to go and do this exact same race at the same time as the [Saturday] sprint race [2:15 pm], bringing the tyres in would be a lot easier because it's way warmer.”
While there was a general expectation of tricky outlaps on Sunday morning, nobody quite expected it to be so extreme, not least for the driver who looked set for a fairytale maiden victory on the streets of the principality.
Rafael Camara led the Monaco F2 feature race from pole position - but he eventually succumbed to the extreme challenge of cold tyres
How cold tyres ended Camara’s F2 race
The feature race proved to be a tense, close fight between Invicta Racing’s Rafael Camara and Campos Racing’s Nikola Tsolov. The pair were separated by very little over the opening stint before taking their respective mandatory pitstops.
Tsolov pitted one lap prior to Camara. By the time Camara exited the pits, Tsolov had latched onto the back of the Invicta driver's gearbox.
Camara drastically struggled to generate any tyre temperature, leaving him highly vulnerable to Tsolov, who smartly piled the pressure onto the Brazilian on the approach to Ste Devote (Turn 1). Sliding on cold rubber, Camara locked up and went deep down the escape road, dropping out of the effective race lead and straight into retirement.
“I knew coming on the left side of the main straight was a little risky,” Tsolov explained after the race. “I kind of knew he [wouldn’t] be able to see me. [Camara] braked a bit early. I felt he [braked] even earlier. So, then I released the brakes a little bit later. But he released them even more.
“So I felt, ‘Oh, he had a cold tyre. So, he must go off.’ I just tried to survive... but I managed to get through.”
The seven-second difference
The stopwatch best illustrates the sheer severity of Camara’s tyre warmup struggles.
Camara’s outlap was a sluggish 1m43.619s. Compare that to the 1m36.288s Tsolov had set on his own outlap just one lap prior. That staggering 7.3-second difference highlights exactly how much pace deserted Camara as he fought a losing battle with cold tyres.
Even with his significant pace advantage over Camara, Tsolov noted how difficult the conditions were, stating he was “going really slow just trying to survive my outlap and I felt like I was almost spinning at the corner.”
Nikola Tsolov celebrates his 2026 Monaco F2 feature win
Following the race, Invicta Racing meticulously reviewed the data to understand the extreme delta. Invicta team principal James Robinson confirmed that the failure rested entirely on tyre temperatures rather than a mechanical gremlin.
“Joshua [Duerksen, Camara's team-mate] did a very competitive outlap. There was nothing wrong with the car," Robinson explained. "We checked all four wheels were on. Checked the tyre pressures were fine. The only thing I can say is that I just don't think we got enough heat into the tyres on the way around.”
Ultimately, that staggering seven-second gap goes to show just how razor-thin the margins are in F2 around Monaco, and why the circuit’s true challenges extend far beyond its narrow walls and into the precise, punishing science of tyre warmup.
