Leclerc becomes Monaco’s first home polesitter in 85 years, Verstappen leads the championship for the first time and Hamilton and Raikkonen extend the record for most Monaco finishes. Here’s a statistic from each driver’s 2021 Monaco Grand Prix weekend!
After qualifying in seventh place, recording his worst qualifying result since the 2018 German Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton finished where he started. 2021 is only the second time in the last seven Monaco Grands Prix that he has finished off the podium. Both times, he finished seventh. Despite the disappointing result, Hamilton equalled Rubens Barrichello’s record of most top ten finishes at the Monaco Grand Prix. Both drivers have finished in the top ten at the circuit on thirteen occasions.
Valtteri Bottas recorded his second retirement of the 2021 season following a pit stop issue. It marked Mercedes’ first retirement in Monaco since Michael Schumacher retired from the 2012 Monaco Grand Prix. Bottas was the first driver to retire from third on the grid at the Monaco Grand Prix since Kimi Raikkonen in 2006.
Max Verstappen took victory in the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix, claiming the twelfth victory of his Formula 1 career. He is the 35th different driver to win in Monaco in the principality’s 67-race tenure on the F1 calendar. Verstappen became the first driver to win the Monaco Grand Prix in a car with a Honda-badged engine since Ayrton Senna in 1992. As a result, Verstappen took the lead of the Drivers’ Championship for the first time in his career. He’s only the fifth driver to lead the title race since the start of the V6 hybrid era, and the first Red Bull driver to lead since Sebastian Vettel at the end of the 2013 season.
Sergio Perez finished in fourth place in the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix, marking the first time he has scored at the event since his podium finish in 2016.
Daniel Ricciardo’s twelfth place in the Monaco Grand Prix ended a fifteen-race streak of points-scoring appearances. He last failed to score at the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix. It was one of the 24 longest points-scoring streaks in F1 history, equalling his second-longest streak. 2021 is the first season in which Ricciardo has failed to score at the Monaco Grand Prix since 2013.
After recording McLaren’s best Monaco Grand Prix qualifying result since 2012, Lando Norris went on to finish on the podium. Norris recorded his third podium finish, equalling the best result of his career to date. It was McLaren’s first podium in Monaco since Jenson Button finished in the top three in 2011.
For a twelfth consecutive Monaco Grand Prix appearance, Sebastian Vettel appeared in Q3. His eighth place was the best qualifying result for an Aston Martin driver since the 1959 British Grand Prix. Vettel went on to finish fifth, scoring his first points since his podium finish at the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix. This was also Aston Martin’s best ever result in Formula 1. It beats their previous best of sixth, recorded by Roy Salvadori at the 1959 British and Portuguese Grands Prix.
Lance Stroll, who qualified thirteenth, is still yet to out-qualify a team-mate at the Monaco Grand Prix in four appearances at the event. This was, however, the first time that the Canadian has made it out of Q1 in Monaco, as well as the first time he has not qualified eighteenth at the track. Stroll finished eighth, marking the first time in four appearances at the circuit that Stroll has scored. His previous best result was sixteenth in 2019.
Fernando Alonso qualified in seventeenth place for the Monaco Grand Prix. It was his first Q1 exit since the 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix and the second time Alonso has been out in Q1 at the Monaco Grand Prix. He was out in Q1 in 2010 following a crash in FP3. The 2021 Monaco Grand Prix marked the first time that Alonso has been out-qualified by his team-mate at four races in a row since Felipe Massa out-qualified him at the four races between the 2012 United States Grand Prix and the 2013 Malaysia Grand Prix. This is only the fourth time in Alonso’s career that he has been out-qualified at four races in a row.
Esteban Ocon finished ninth in the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix, scoring in the principality for the second time in his career. Ocon is yet to finish behind his team-mate in any of the three Monaco races which he has completed.
Despite crashing and bringing out the red flags at the end of qualifying, Charles Leclerc took pole position for his home race. It was the first time a Monegasque driver has taken pole position at the Monaco Grand Prix since Louis Chiron did so in 1936. But Leclerc failed to start the race. That made the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix only the fifth in F1 history in which the polesitter did not start. The last time that the polesitter failed to start was at the 2005 United States Grand Prix, when Jarno Trulli pulled into the pits at the end of the formation lap.
Carlos Sainz was out-qualified by his team-mate in Monaco for the first time in his career. The Spaniard went on to finish on the podium for the third time in his career, equalling his best ever F1 result. Sainz’s second place made the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix the fourth consecutive Monaco race in which a Ferrari driver has finished in second place.
Pierre Gasly maintained his 100% Q3 and points-scoring records at the Monaco Grand Prix. The Frenchman’s sixth place in qualifying equalled the Red Bull junior team’s best ever qualifying result at the Monaco Grand Prix. Carlos Sainz qualified sixth for Toro Rosso in 2017.
Yuki Tsunoda finished in sixteenth place at the Monaco Grand Prix. It was the lowest position in which he’s finished a race, not counting his non-finish at the Spanish Grand Prix. Not counting DNFs, this was also the worst result for the Red Bull junior team at Monaco.
With eleventh place, Kimi Raikkonen equalled his best result of the 2021 season. He also finished eleventh in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. The Finn completed 77 laps of the race, putting him two laps short of equalling Graham Hill’s record of most laps raced at the Monaco Grand Prix. Along with Lewis Hamilton, Raikkonen extended the record of most finishes at the Monaco Grand Prix to fourteen.
After reaching Q3 for the first time since last year’s Turkish Grand Prix, Antonio Giovinazzi recorded Alfa Romeo’s first point of the season with a tenth place finish in Monaco. It was his and the team’s first points finish since the 2020 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. Giovinazzi scored the first point for the Alfa Romeo/Sauber team at the Monaco Grand Prix since Felipe Nasr finished ninth in 2015. Giovinazzi’s tenth place was the first time that a team named Alfa Romeo has scored at the Monaco Grand Prix since Mauro Baldi finished sixth in 1983.
A crash in Free Practice 3 meant that Mick Schumacher became the first driver to fail to set a lap time in qualifying since Yuki Tsunoda, who crashed out during Q1 at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. Schumacher was also the first driver to fail to make an on track appearance in a qualifying session since Daniil Kvyat at the 2019 Russian Grand Prix and the first driver not to appear in qualifying at the Monaco Grand Prix since Max Verstappen in 2018.
Despite both Haas cars finishing three laps down on the leader – and them being lapped by every other car in the field – Nikita Mazepin equalled the best result of his F1 career to date with seventeenth place. It was the first time he finished ahead of his team-mate in a Grand Prix.
George Russell finished in fourteenth place for the third time in the first five races of the 2021 season. Russell was the first Williams driver to get out of Q1 at the Monaco Grand Prix since 2018. His fourteenth place was the best result for a Williams driver in Monaco since Felipe Massa finished ninth in 2017.
Finishing in fifteenth place on his first appearance at the Monaco Grand Prix, Nicholas Latifi recorded his best result since the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix, where he finished fourteenth.
Read more statistics from the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix in our Post Race Statistics article!