Monaco booming in interest and gets people talking - Domenicali

Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali says the Monaco Grand Prix is booming as an event, even while new strategic regulations have helped ignite debate about the sporting aspect.

This year’s race featured a new rule that mandated the need to use three different sets of tires during the race, forcing all teams to make at least two pit stops and adding an extra layer of intrigue. In the end the change did little to mix up the order after qualifying, with Racing Bulls and Williams both using their cars to create gaps for each other, but Domenicali says the overall value of the event should not be underestimated.

“The Monaco event has been amazing,” Domenicali told Sky Sports at the premiere of the new Netflix documentary on F1 Academy. “We never had so many people, so many boats, so much attention. That means that the event itself is what Formula 1 wants, and that is really great.

“We know that the width of the city and the width of the circuit is that one [narrow], and the cars are quite big, so the attempt is to create some tension in that. It was great to see that the day before everyone was thinking that everyone would stop on the first lap, and there was a lot of discussion, so no-one understood absolutely everything.
“So I think it was the right attempt, and the attention was definitely there. And of course you know that teams took the strategy out a bit, but the good thing is we are talking about it, and that is what we wanted.”

Domenicali was unlikely to be critical of the new rules, but even a team principal who saw a car fail to benefit and have to settle for fourth place - Red Bull's Christian Horner - believes the changes did add an extra aspect to the race.

“I would say it was an improvement,” Horner said. “It was strategically more interesting, there was more jeopardy to it, certainly better than last year where there was just a procession. The fundamental problem is you cannot overtake here, and you can drive around three or four seconds off the pace.
“We rolled the dice a little bit. Starting on the hard (tire), our tactic was always to go long, with the main opportunity being Safety Cars or red flag, which can sometimes be the case here. So Max led a large portion of the race but was one of those Monacos where everyone pretty much behaved. So at the first stop we got pretty close to Oscar [Piastri] at one point, he had a wobble on his second lap out of his pit stop, but we would have been at best alongside, so we decided keep going.

“The upside would have been if there had been a Safety Car or red flag, Max would have led. Then he had the medium tire, went very long, stopped on the last lap, and again you’re just hanging out for a Safety Car or VSC and red flag.

“For Yuki [Tsunoda] we did the inverse and went [on] lap one. It initially looked like he would get a significant benefit from it but then everyone started to drive extremely slowly as they started to play around with the tactics, he was basically on the same set of tires for the whole race and set his fastest lap at the end there when he finally got some clear traffic. He was just sat in a queue the whole race, so it was difficult for him.”