For the first time in 2026, Ferrari arrive at a grand prix weekend as the team to beat — and it is their rivals doing the talking. The Monaco Grand Prix has long rewarded the kind of car Ferrari has built this year, and the paddock has spent the build-up tipping the Scuderia to score its first win of a season dominated so far by Mercedes.
The endorsements have come from the very people Ferrari needs to beat. Reigning world champion Lando Norris has said he is convinced Ferrari will take pole, rating its low-speed performance as comfortably the strongest on the grid. Championship leader Kimi Antonelli has pointed instead to the Ferrari engine as the key to its expected Monaco pace. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has gone furthest of all, describing Ferrari as probably the favourite for the weekend.
The logic is straightforward. Ferrari's 2026 car has carried over the team's traditional strengths — strong kerb riding and short-duration corner performance — even under an all-new set of regulations. Monaco is built almost entirely from the slow, sharp corners that play to those strengths, and it is not a power-sensitive circuit, which should mask the V6 engine weakness that has held Ferrari back at faster venues. The track is also energy-rich: drivers can recharge the battery easily and deploy it where they need it, neutralising any advantage Mercedes has in squeezing the last drop from its hybrid system.
There is even a Ferrari-specific quirk in its favour. The Scuderia runs a smaller turbo than its rivals, which spins up more easily and helps corner-exit traction without leaning so heavily on electrical deployment. On a normal track, rivals fill that gap by draining the battery off the corner. In Monaco, that matters far less.
But here is the catch that the favourite tag glosses over. Monaco's extreme demands push every team into an operating window they have not run in all season, so the early-season form book may simply not translate. More importantly, the FIA has imposed new limits on how the hybrid can be used this weekend, with the MGU-K running at maximum capacity far less than at other tracks. That reduces the engine compromise that normally punishes Ferrari's rivals — meaning the cars that usually have to spend more battery to compensate will not be penalised here in the way they are at energy-hungry circuits like Melbourne or Suzuka.
The car advantage is not exclusive, either. Every team will dial its set-up towards low speed this weekend, and McLaren believes the very slowest corners are actually where its own car is strongest. A couple of Monaco's medium-speed sections could even pull Mercedes back into the fight — and the German marque's overall edge in 2026 has been measured in several tenths, not hundredths.
So Ferrari arrives as the favourite by acclamation, with the smart caveat that the case is far less clear-cut than the headlines suggest. If the Scuderia is going to end Mercedes' winning streak, Monaco is the best chance it has had — but it is being talked up as a certainty for a scenario that is anything but.
Source: newsformula.one