Red Bull lay out clear plan to beat Ferrari in Monaco qualifying battle

The 58-year-old watched his team, particularly Max Verstappen, make significant progress throughout Friday’s running, closing the gap to the pace-setting Ferraris across both practice sessions. In FP1, Verstappen finished just over half a second behind Charles Leclerc, who topped the timesheets. However, the gap was much narrower in FP2, with the four-time world champion ending the session little more than a tenth adrift of Lewis Hamilton’s benchmark time.

Speaking after the opening day of track action in the Principality, Monaghan was asked about the reasoning behind Verstappen’s approach during Friday’s running. The British engineer explained:

“It depends on how you approach the first lap and then what you do each time. If we maybe look at it a different way, rather than saying, ‘Is there an engine penalty from doing that type of running?’, our currency is lap time. We need the quickest lap on the board that we can get. And if doing that produces the quickest lap time on the board, whether there’s an engine penalty or not, it doesn’t actually matter. That’s the fastest way we can get our car to go around the lap. That’s the simplest way to look at it,” he explained.

When asked whether that suggested Red Bull had managed to optimise the tyres and get them into the ideal operating window, Monaghan stressed that several factors must align.

Asked what Red Bull needed to do to overhaul Ferrari’s advantage, Monaghan suggested that the margins at the front are likely to be incredibly fine heading into Saturday’s crucial qualifying session.

“Of course. The question is by how much, and then what can Charles do, what can Lewis do? I don’t suppose Kimi Antonelli and George Russell are going to give us an easy time. I dare say Isack Hadjar will want a piece of the action. Oscar Piastri hasn’t been mentioned yet. Lando Norris didn’t get far. It’s going to be squeaky tight tomorrow, isn’t it? Everybody’s going to be fast. If Ferrari is a bit quicker than us, we’ve got to do a little bit better job tonight. We’ll be faster than them tomorrow,” he concluded.

Friday’s running proved particularly encouraging for Red Bull, although it was not without incident. Verstappen's teammate, Hadjar, suffered a crash during the opening practice session after pushing slightly too hard through the second chicane in the Swimming Pool section. The rear of his car stepped out, sending the Frenchman into the barriers.