Monaco was supposed to be a coronation. The pre-race prediction model had Charles Leclerc winning at home in a Ferrari, with Oliver Bearman surging to second and a tidy top five of favourites doing exactly what favourites do around the streets of the Principality. Instead, the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix delivered one of the most chaotic afternoons the modern era of the sport has seen: a pre-race downpour delayed the start, a red flag interrupted the closing laps, seven cars failed to see the chequered flag, and a stewards' reversal reshuffled the podium hours after the race had finished.

By the time the dust settled, Kimi Antonelli had converted pole into a fifth straight victory, Lewis Hamilton had banked Ferrari's best result of the year from a driver the prediction system had written off, and Charles Leclerc — the man predicted to win it all — was left fuming in the garage about his brakes. Here's how every driver's afternoon compared to what the numbers said should happen, and why.

Kimi Antonelli — Predicted P3, Finished P1

The prediction model had Antonelli as a podium threat, not the man to beat, but the young Mercedes driver made a mockery of that ranking. He led from pole to flag, set the fastest lap for good measure, and picked up his fifth consecutive win — a run of form that has now stretched his championship lead out to roughly 66-68 points over Hamilton. In a race where reliability and racecraft decided everything, Antonelli simply never gave anyone a look in.

Lewis Hamilton — Predicted P11, Finished P2

This is the single biggest positive shock of the weekend. The prediction algorithm had Hamilton scoring nothing; instead he delivered Ferrari's best result of the season, his second straight runner-up finish after Canada. A strong P3 qualifying got him into the lead group before Verstappen's grid dropped one spot when the Red Bull failed to launch, and from there Hamilton drove a controlled, points-management race rather than an outright charge — even absorbing a pitlane-speeding penalty without losing the position. He called the gap to a maiden Ferrari win "closer than ever," and on this evidence it's hard to argue.

Isack Hadjar — Predicted P9, Finished P3

A huge overperformance, and one with a genuinely dramatic backstory. Hadjar briefly found himself elevated to the podium when Pierre Gasly picked up two 5-second penalties for pitlane speeding, before an Alpine right-of-review request saw those penalties rescinded and the order reshuffled again. When the dust settled, Hadjar still walked away with a podium — six places better than the prediction model expected, and a result Red Bull's junior team will happily bank regardless of how the stewards' paperwork read along the way.

Oscar Piastri — Predicted P8, Finished P4

While his title-defending teammate suffered another mechanical nightmare (more on that below), Piastri quietly delivered exactly what a healthy McLaren should: a clean run to fourth, four places up on the prediction. With Norris parked and the garage's reliability woes headline news, Piastri's afternoon was the closest thing McLaren had to a bright spot.

Liam Lawson — Predicted P6, Finished P5

One of only two drivers on the grid whose race the prediction system called almost perfectly — Lawson finished a place ahead of his predicted slot after the late Gasly-penalty reshuffle nudged him forward slightly, but in a race defined by chaos, landing this close to the forecast was itself a quietly impressive result for RB.

Arvid Lindblad — Predicted P7, Finished P6

Like his RB teammate, Lindblad's race tracked the prediction model almost exactly, only gaining one place once the final classification was sorted out post-penalty-reversal. In a weekend where podium contenders were crashing out and engines were failing left and right, simply doing what was expected of you counted as a strong result.

Pierre Gasly — Predicted P15, Finished P7 (classified)

Gasly's afternoon is the strangest line in the results sheet. He crossed the line third on the road, was hit with two 5-second penalties for pitlane speeding that dropped him to seventh, then had those penalties rescinded entirely after Alpine successfully appealed — only for the final classification to still show him seventh once the rest of the order was corrected around him. However you slice it, climbing from a predicted P15 to fight for a podium was a major step up for Alpine, even if the stewards' back-and-forth cost him the trophy in the end.

Alex Albon — Predicted P10, Finished P8

A solid, unspectacular overperformance for Williams' lead driver, gaining two places on the prediction model's forecast. With so many faster cars falling by the wayside, Albon's steady hands were rewarded with a finish comfortably ahead of expectations.

Esteban Ocon — Predicted P13, Finished P9

Ocon picked up four places on his predicted finish, salvaging a points result for Haas on a day when teammate Bearman's race fell apart inside the first lap. While the headlines went to Antonelli and Hamilton, results like this are exactly how a midfield team survives a chaotic weekend intact.

Fernando Alonso — Predicted P18, Finished P10

The biggest positive surprise outside the podium battle. Predicted to finish outside the points at the bottom half of the grid, Alonso instead brought Aston Martin home in the top ten — an eight-place gain that owed plenty to the sheer volume of retirements ahead of him, but which the veteran still had to convert by staying out of the trouble that claimed his own teammate.

Gabriel Bortoleto — Predicted P19, Finished P11

Another driver who benefited from the carnage further up the road, Bortoleto came home eight places better than forecast, just missing out on points but comfortably beating his predicted finishing slot for Audi.

George Russell — Predicted P4, Finished P12

This is where Mercedes' afternoon turned sour, and it's squarely a strategy story rather than a pace one. Russell had been running well inside the prediction model's forecasted top five when a pitstop mix-up wrecked his race: after picking up a 5-second penalty, his crew brought him in under the Safety Car and immediately changed his tyres instead of serving the time penalty first, compounding the error rather than fixing it. Team boss Toto Wolff admitted to internal "confusion" over the call, while Red Bull's Christian Horner branded Mercedes' strategy for Russell "very defeatist." Russell's own reaction said it all: "I'm beyond frustration now... I'm just struggling to comprehend how this season has panned out." A predicted podium/points finish evaporated into a missed-points weekend — his second in a row.

Nico Hulkenberg — Predicted P14, Finished P13

Almost bang on the prediction model's number, Hulkenberg's race is nevertheless a footnote in someone else's story: he made contact with Carlos Sainz's Williams at the Loews Hairpin late on, a collision that ended Sainz's race and became one of the flashpoints of a chaotic final third.

Franco Colapinto — Predicted P17, Finished P14

Roughly matching his predicted finish, Colapinto was also drawn into the late-race Sainz saga, tagging the stricken Williams a second time at Portier as Sainz tried to limp back to the pits. A modest result that came with an asterisk attached.

Sergio Perez — Predicted P22, Finished P15

Predicted to finish dead last, Perez instead climbed seven places clear of the prediction model's floor for Cadillac — hardly a headline result, but a clear step above expectations on a weekend when simply finishing the race counted for a lot.

Carlos Sainz — Predicted P12, Finished P16 (DNF, classified)

A cruel one for Williams. Sainz had been running as high as P10, with a points finish well within reach, when Nico Hulkenberg's Audi hit him at the Loews Hairpin on lap 70. As he tried to nurse the car back to the pits, Franco Colapinto's Alpine caught him again at Portier, finally ending his race for good. Sainz didn't hold back afterwards, calling Hulkenberg's move "stupid" and the double contact "borderline unacceptable," while Williams boss James Vowles flagged it as a genuinely costly blow to the team's points tally. A predicted non-scorer who was on course to beat the prediction model comfortably before the chaos caught up with him.

Max Verstappen — Predicted P16, Finished DNF

The first retirement of the race, and a strange one. Starting P2, Verstappen's power unit "just dropped dead," in his own words, the moment the clutch was released at lights-out on the formation lap — before the race had even properly begun. Red Bull principal Laurent Mekies confirmed an engine-related fault and noted the team had already been planning a power-unit change after Monaco regardless. It's Verstappen's second DNF of the season after China, and a result that undershoots even a modest predicted finish of P16.

Valtteri Bottas — Predicted P20, Finished DNF

Retiring around lap 18 with brake issues, Bottas's race ended long before the headline chaos even began — a quiet reliability exit for Cadillac in a predicted-bottom-of-the-grid slot that the car never really got the chance to live up to or down.

Oliver Bearman — Predicted P2, Finished DNF

The prediction model's single biggest miss of the weekend. Bearman was tipped for a career-best result, second only to a home-winning Leclerc, but early contact damaged his front wing and forced a lap-one pit stop. He soldiered on for a while before retiring around lap 30, later summing it up simply as "a challenging weekend in general." From predicted podium-adjacent to zero points, it's as steep a fall as the sheet shows.

Lando Norris — Predicted P5, Finished DNF

Norris's title defense took another hit as a power unit failure — described by the driver as "issues from the engine, the turbo, the battery, a lot of things that don't sound correct" — ended his race after 46 laps, his second consecutive engine-related retirement. He was running in a battle with Gasly and Russell at the time. Reporting around the paddock has started calling it a full-blown McLaren "reliability crisis," and a predicted top-five finish turning into a zero only adds fuel to that narrative.

Lance Stroll — Predicted P21, Finished DNF

Stroll's crash at the Antony Noghes corner was more than just his own race ending — it triggered the Safety Car that set up the late restart during which Leclerc would crash at the exact same spot. A predicted backmarker finish became a DNF, but its real significance was as the spark for the race's chaotic finale.

Charles Leclerc — Predicted P1, Finished DNF

The prediction model's marquee call, and its most spectacular failure. Leclerc was running in podium contention, likely behind teammate Hamilton, when he crashed at Antony Noghes on lap 66 during the Safety Car restart triggered by Stroll's earlier incident at the same corner — a section of track surface that had broken up and needed repair, prompting the red flag. Leclerc was adamant the crash wasn't driver error, revealing afterwards that three of his four brakes had failed: "I'm not even going to take the blame! These f***ing brakes!" He later sparred publicly with Ferrari's brake supplier Brembo over the cause. For a driver predicted to win his home race, walking away furious and pointless was as big a gap between expectation and reality as Monaco produced all day.

Final Takeaways

The story of this Monaco Grand Prix wasn't pace, it was survival. A pre-race downpour delayed the start, and the closing laps were consumed by back-to-back Safety Car periods and a red flag after Stroll and then Leclerc crashed at the same corner, with a broken-up track surface adding a genuine safety concern into the mix. Seven cars failed to finish — Verstappen, Bottas, Bearman, Norris, Stroll, Leclerc and, in effect, Sainz — wiping out three of the prediction model's predicted top five (Leclerc, Bearman and Norris) entirely and turning what looked on paper like a Ferrari-and-Mercedes benefit into a race decided by reliability failures, driver incidents and a costly Mercedes strategy blunder with Russell. Add in a post-race stewards' reversal that shuffled the podium hours after the chequered flag, and Monaco 2026 will be remembered less for who was fastest and more for who simply survived it — a category topped, emphatically, by Kimi Antonelli.