For the first time in 2026, a Grand Prix weekend does not open with the assumption that Mercedes will simply disappear up the road. Monaco, combined with the FIA's decision to switch off active aerodynamics and straight-line mode, has created an opening that the opening rounds never offered, and Ferrari look the team most likely to seize it.
The reasoning sits in the nature of the circuit. Monte Carlo is built almost entirely from slow and medium-speed corners, the kind that reward mechanical grip and downforce rather than engine performance and deployment, the very areas where Mercedes has stretched clear. Remove the movable wings and straight-line mode, cap the electrical power, and the strongest cornering cars come to the fore. The SF-26 has been praised all season for exactly that trait, even while lacking outright power-unit punch on quicker tracks.
That has fuelled growing expectation that Ferrari could be the genuine threat in Monaco, the first real chance of the year to challenge the leaders on pace rather than luck. The principality has a long record of springing results the form guide did not see coming, and the rule reset only broadens the range of what is possible.
The driver storylines add to it. Lewis Hamilton is still hunting his maiden Ferrari win and arrived off the back of one of his smoothest weekends with the team in Canada; a circuit that has produced some of his career-best drives, on a weekend where the field could compress, is among his best chances yet to end the wait. Charles Leclerc, meanwhile, races at home seeking redemption after labelling his Canada outing possibly the worst weekend of his career.
Nothing is decided, of course. Mercedes remains the benchmark and Monaco's reliance on a single qualifying lap means Saturday could still settle everything. But after months of chasing, Ferrari finally have a weekend shaped to their strengths, a car suited to these corners and two drivers with every reason to deliver, on the one circuit where the established order has always been most fragile.
Source: newsformula.one