Home hero Leclerc with an early advantage – Monaco Grand Prix FP1 Report

By Max Drinkwater-James

Formula 1 kickstarts its European leg of the season with the jewel in the calendar with the streets of Monaco hosting the sixth round of the 2026 F1 season. All eleven teams hit the streets for the first session of the weekend Friday lunchtime.

It was a session full of learnings and plenty of heart in the mouth moments for drivers up and down the grid most notably through the swimming pool session where Lando Norris saved a big slide just laps before Isaac Hadjar had a carbon copy slide but found the barriers and brought out the red flag.

The session came to an end when Fernando Alonso clipped the wall heading out of the tunnel breaking his front wing and bringing out the red flag to conclude the session.

Ferrari put good use of their rumoured performance with a 1-2 finish in FP1 Charles Leclerc chalking up a time of 1:13:978 on the medium tyre followed closely by teammate Lewis Hamilton just 0.226s behind.

Max Verstappen finished the session in P3 with a surprising show of pace despite his complaints over the radio of his cars performance, the Dutchman followed by the two Mercedes with Kimi Antonelli in P4 and Russell in P5 one second off Leclerc’s best time.

Lando Norris survived his slide and brought his car home in P6 with the wily head of Nico Hulkenberg and his Audi surprising the timing tower in P7 whilst looking competitive with pace on the table still to utilise.

McLaren’s struggles further with Oscar Piastri only mustering a P8 finish with the other Audi of Gabriel Bortoleto sneaking into P9 with Audi having the potential as a surprise package this weekend.

The top ten was completed by Frenchman Pierre Gasly who is on a fine run of form and is looking for another strong weekend in his Alpine, Alex Albon only mustered a time good enough for P11 tailed closely by teammate Carlos Sainz in what looks like another puzzling weekend for Williams.

Hadjar with a rough session and a shunt to boot finished in P13 with limited run time, Sergio Perez with a slight positive for Cadillac in their first grand prix around Monaco who finished the session in P14.

The Alpine of Franco Colapinto followed suit in P15 with Oliver Bearman and fellow Haas teammate Esteban Ocon crossing in P16 and P17 respectively in a poor first session for Haas.

The bottom five was shared between the VCARB’s of Arvid Linblad and Liam Lawson in P18 and P19 both of which picking up investigations for incident during the session, Linblad for impeding Piastri and Lawson for exiting the pitlane through a red light.

Alonso finished P20 with Valterri Bottas and Aston Martin teammate Lance Stroll completing the timesheet in P21 and P22 after the first practice session of the weekend.