Monza 2026

The switch between two tactical tasks made it look as though someone had shut down the nuclear reactor aboard Antonelli’s starship halfway through the race. The Mercedes that had passed almost the entire field by lap 18 did not suddenly become slower once it took the lead. What changed were the conditions in which it produced its speed, and the opponent it now had to beat. Passing slower cars with the help of their slipstream is one task. Pulling away from another Mercedes, now benefiting from your slipstream, is considerably harder.

Three advantages need to be distinguished here: the car’s underlying pace, the assistance provided by its position on the road, and the grip left in its tyres for an attack. They can add together, or cancel one another out.

Task	What helps	What gets in the way
Catch a slower car	Underlying pace; its slipstream on the straights	Lost downforce in the corners; the rival may itself be benefiting from a car ahead
Pass and continue through the field	An advantage under acceleration and braking; the next car’s slipstream if the gaps are small	Energy spent on the attack; a counterattack
Pull away from an equally fast rival	Sustainable pace and tyre condition	Full aerodynamic drag at the front; the pursuer’s slipstream and access to overtake mode

Dirty air does not disappear from this picture. In the corners, the wake of the car ahead can reduce downforce and upset the balance. On the straights, however, it reduces drag. Monza’s long acceleration zones offer considerable scope to exploit that: a car can reach a higher speed with the same power, or maintain the required speed while spending less energy. The latter does not mean the battery automatically recharges. It simply offers a chance to use less of its energy, if the power-unit control strategy allows it.

The scale of the effect follows from the cubic relationship between speed and the power needed to overcome aerodynamic drag: all else being equal, a 5 per cent increase in speed requires roughly 16 per cent more power just to push through the air. An advantage of a few dozen metres under braking can therefore come from the conditions in which the cars are running, rather than an enormous difference between their engines. Drag rises as the attacking car pulls out of the tow; the speed difference already accumulated still has to be converted into a completed pass. Side-drafting may help here: a sharp increase in the leading car’s drag as a rival draws alongside. But the attacker first needs enough momentum to get there. On an oval, different lines through the banking can provide it. On a conventional circuit, arranging that is harder.

Working through a tightly packed group has a particular feature: once one car is passed, the next may be immediately ahead. The driver then picks up another tow on the straight. The leader of the whole group has no next car to aim for. Instead, a rival remains behind, receiving the benefit of the leader’s wake. How long this mechanism operates during any particular charge depends on the gaps.

The electrical contribution sharpens the distinction. Energy can be concentrated on a single attack, but sustained pace requires expenditure and recovery to be balanced over a sequence of laps. If a pass demands extra energy, the same acceleration cannot be repeated indefinitely. Meanwhile, a pursuer meeting the conditions gains access to overtake mode, with its one-second gap threshold. That creates another hurdle: the leader must pull clear quickly enough to take the rival outside the window in which that assistance is permitted. The mode itself does not create electricity. The power unit must still supply the energy.

This is the crucial distinction: a pass requires a local advantage; a breakaway requires a sustained advantage over the lap. A driver can gain a position on one straight and hand it back on the next, now without a tow and with a less favourable energy balance. After the race, Andrea Stella explicitly linked the difficulty of pulling away to the cars’ wakes and energy management. Piastri described the battle as an exchange of attacks in which avoiding unnecessary time loss required a deliberate effort.

Why did the others not use the same method? Because assistance for the chasing car does not erase the underlying difference in performance, and within a group it often benefits both cars in a duel. If the car ahead is itself in someone else’s slipstream and has access to overtake mode, the pursuer has no exclusive advantage. It still needs a better corner exit, a sufficient speed difference and the ability to hold the position through braking. A tow may help a car short of pace stay with the group without giving it enough to pass through the entire pack.

Nor does the gain on the straight come free of a cost in the corners. If a car loses too much behind a rival through Lesmo or Ascari, it starts its attack from too far back. If there is little grip in reserve, braking later compromises the exit. If electrical assistance runs out earlier, the speed difference disappears before the move is complete. These are different constraints, and a single top-speed figure cannot distinguish between them.

Red Bull provided direct evidence of an energy limitation. Verstappen explained that he lacked electrical deployment on the straights, that overtake mode helped him stay with the Mercedes cars, and that he had to recover positions under late braking. The tow helped compensate for a weakness; it did not make his car faster over the whole lap. Max also made progress after stopping under the virtual safety car. The mechanism behind a charge through the field was available to more than one driver, but they could not all exploit it to the same extent.

McLaren was limited by a lack of overall speed, particularly on the straights; Piastri ranked the team third on race pace. Sharing an engine supplier with the winner does not equalise aerodynamic drag, corner exits or the conditions in which power can be used. At Alpine, the gulf between pole position and seventh place was no sudden disappearance of performance either. Gasly acknowledged that the team had expected weaker race pace and needed to improve its use of the tyres. One fast lap does not guarantee that a car can reproduce its advantages in traffic.

Hamilton’s lack of pace was compounded by a long stint on medium tyres after the restart. He did not stop under the virtual safety car and questioned the compound choice after the finish, while acknowledging that his rivals had been faster regardless. Retaining a position by staying out, then defending it, is a very different task from attacking on a fresher set.

The two Mercedes cars were not racing under identical conditions either. After the red flag, Antonelli was on mediums and Russell on hards. And ‘nineteenth to first’ exaggerates the length of the uninterrupted chase: Kimi was already twelfth when the race was stopped, after which the gaps were erased. His genuine pace advantage was combined with compressed gaps and a difference in compounds. Once Russell took the lead, he had to pull away from his team-mate in a comparable car. That is a much stricter test of speed than overtaking in the midfield - a task that is also much easier on the tyres along long straights than on a more tortuous circuit.

The decisive change came in the available grip. On lap 29, Antonelli received a fresh set of mediums while Russell continued on his existing hards. Pirelli judged overall degradation to be low: both medium and hard tyres were capable of 50-lap stints. But being able to reach the finish is not the same as being able to defend against a fresh set.

Mercedes reported front-tyre vibrations on Russell’s car and doubts about whether Antonelli’s first set of mediums could last the distance. Shovlin nevertheless acknowledged that, when the decision was made, avoiding another stop looked slightly stronger. The alternative worked because Kimi cleared the traffic faster than the team had expected. Fresh tyres had to repay both the pit stop and the overtaking required afterwards. The virtual safety car reduced the cost of the former; the car’s speed and the driver’s execution reduced the latter.

What disappeared on lap 18 was not the eventual winner’s source of power. He had reached the end of the queue of cars whose slipstreams helped him catch the next one. Ahead lay clean air; behind was a rival in equivalent machinery with all the advantages of the chase. To make the final break, he needed a new advantage, this time from the tyres. For the others, a tow often did no more than offset their own losses: enough to stay in touch and answer attacks, but not enough performance in reserve to work their way through the whole group.