Monaco Grand Prix: Will 2026’s ‘yo-yo racing’ mean overtaking is more likely on F1’s narrowest circuit?
Monaco has become famous in recent years for soporific racing where the leader controls the pace from the front in an attempt to secure victory, knowing that overtaking is almost impossible.
In last year’s 78-lap race, only four overtakes were made in total. The average for the 24 races in 2025, excluding sprints, was 66.9.
F1 has a new look this year, with increased overtaking levels and on-track battles lasting multiple laps, with drivers changing positions repeatedly.
Could this change the character of the race where overtaking is the hardest?
On paper, there is reason to believe this could happen. Anyway, just a little bit.
Drivers have complained in recent years that the cars are too big, too long and wide to race effectively on the narrow streets of Monaco.
However, the fact that the cars are slightly lighter and smaller this year is unlikely to make a difference.
Although the 2026 cars are 10 cm narrower and slightly shorter, they are still 10 cm wider than the cars of 20 years ago. Overtaking cars of similar competitiveness at Monaco has been nearly impossible for at least half a century.
If anything will change the nature of racing at Monaco, it’s new engines with a nominal 50-50 split between internal combustion and electric power and, most importantly, a new overtaking mode.
‘Passing’ gives the driver an extra 0.5 MJ of electrical energy per lap, one second behind the vehicle in front. This is at the heart of the new character of racing this year and what many in the sport, including drivers, describe as “yo-yo racing”.
The cars stayed together for several laps because with the help of overtaking mode the car behind overtook the car in front. For the advantage of switching to the vehicle being overtaken only when switching to overtaking mode.
This back-and-forth situation is proving difficult for drivers to escape, and there have been examples of this type of battle at every race this season.
Until Sunday afternoon, no one knows how overtaking mode will affect racing in Monaco. However, if it is necessary to make a difference and enable drivers to get into a position where they can at least attempt to overtake, this will probably be done in conjunction with stabilizing tire wear.
If the car in front is struggling with rear tire wear and therefore has limited grip when accelerating, this combined with the overtaking mode can make them vulnerable to the car behind.
However, due to the nature of Monaco, some aspects of the transition mode will not be played this weekend.
A large number of overtaking maneuvers this year were often caused by the two vehicles being in different energy distribution states.
The extra energy provided by ‘transition’ mode means that the vehicle behind can distribute electrical power for longer than the vehicle in front.
So, if a car has an extra 350kW (480bhp) compared to the car it is racing, that car will pass. This is what has led two-time champion Fernando Alonso to refer to many of this year’s overtakes as “avoidance action”.
Put differently, it’s a view shared by Max Verstappen.
That’s because cars are basically short on energy this year; They cannot recover enough electrical energy to always have the full power a driver would want.
However, Monaco is the least energy consuming track of the year. So this balance in power will be much less common.
