The sixth round of the 2026 Formula 1 season takes place at the Monaco Grand Prix.
A divisive event among the F1 fanbase, Monaco is still viewed as the jewel in the championship's crown, with the narrow, twisting streets offering a challenge seen nowhere else on the calendar. With no time to rest on the 19-turn, 3.337km layout, even the smallest of mistakes can carry a huge penalty.
Don't expect to see too much focus on long runs across Friday, with the focus solely on securing an elevated grid position, given how difficult overtaking is in the Principality - a point highlighted by the fact that only Lance Stroll completed an on-track overtake after lap one in 2025.
Kimi Antonelli arrives in Monaco full of confidence after winning the Canadian Grand Prix, to make it four straight victories for the Italian teenager. Should he take to the top step of the podium in Monaco, he will equal Lewis Hamilton's greatest winning streak, with the seven-time champion twice achieving five on the bounce.
But he will face stiff competition from Mercedes team-mate George Russell, with whom he engaged in a tense wheel-to-wheel battle in Montreal before the Briton retired through a reliability issue.
McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari will also fancy their chances of disrupting Mercedes' early dominance, with Monaco often throwing up a surprise result in the midst of a dominant era.
Given its strength in low and mid-speed corners, Ferrari has been widely tipped as the favourite for success in Monaco, with home hero Charles Leclerc looking to replicate his 2024 success.
2026 Monaco Grand Prix Friday schedule
FP1 12:30pm BST - 1:30pm BST
FP2: 4:00pm BST - 5:00pm BST
Verstappen is complaining about a release that "just doesn't work." It's quite possibly a downshift switch, which has been the cause of various complaints so far this year.
You can hear the wheelspin on acceleration out of the low-speed corners. He goes third fastest, which is mega considering how dodgy the lap looked.
Medium tyres for most, with Bottas the first to run the red-walled soft tyres.
The session resumes after Hadjar's Red Bull is cleared out of the way.
The session will resume at 14:13 local time, so in one minute.
Hadjar lost the rear through the first part of the swimming pool exit, locked all four tyres, and he then went nose-first into the wall, before his Red Bull spun and slammed its rear into the wall for added damage.
Hadjar crashes heavily on the exit of the swimming pool. That could well be his day over as the red flags fly.
Norris is pushing beyond what you really should in FP1 and it's not really yeilding results. The rear almost overtakes the front...and Hadjar has crashed!
Having fitted the mediums earlier than any of the other front-runners, Antonelli now sets a session-topping effort, with a 1m14.537s effort He is four tenths clear of Leclerc, but Russell is now setting his own best sectors.
The top 10 after 30 minutes:
As we reach the halfway points, the majority of the field has pulled into the pits. Quite possibly, we'll begin to see a lot of medium tyre runs soon.
We're under 75 seconds, as Leclerc puts in a 1m14.928s. His hards are 19 laps old, so unlike Verstappen's Red Bull, the Ferrari is able to keep its tyres alive a little longer.
"My tyres are completely dead," reports Verstappen. His hard tyres have lasted just 15 laps.
Antonelli has now put on a set of mediums.
The errors are beginning to creep in, as Leclerc narrowly avoids a costly brush with the barriers, and Piastri slows unexpectedly.
Hamilton then comes close to a collision with an Alpine, before losing the rear at the chicance. He improved to second place, but that was a very loose car.
As the pits become busy with drivers coming in for minor tweaks before heading straight back out, Antonelli bangs in a lap to put himself in P2.
Slowest of all, Bortoleto appears to be struggling in the early stages, something only highlighted more by Hulkenberg's sixth-place ranking.
There's Leclerc, putting in a 1m15.060 on 10-lap old hards, besting Hamilton's previous best by six tenths.
Hadjar is now complaining that the bumps on the way up the hill are causing significant bouncing, making his Red Bull "undrivable". But this is Monaco, and the bumps are all part of it.
All is not well at Haas, as Ocon and Bearman have a public dispute on the radio, with the pair getting very close on the track. It appeared that Bearman was holding up his team-mate, but the Briton viewed things differently.
The times continue to fall, with the Mercedes pair entering the top 10. A few cars are now running with medium rubber, including the Cadillac pair. Stroll is no finally back out on the track, with mediums, after a lengthy spell in the garage.
Showing strong early pace, Perez is fifth for Cadillac! Antonelli is P8 for Mercedes, with Russell P15.
On the hards, the times aren't entirely relevant right now, but Hamilton is fastest with a 1m15.892s effort. Verstappen, Piastri, and Norris follow.
Lawson is reporting the same steering issue as Lindblad at the hairpin. You can see they're using full lock but only just make it around with the widest entry, so this is a problem, and not one that could easily be fixed during the session.
Aside from a lap on mediums for Stroll, all the remaining 21 drivers are on hard tyres, rubbering in the track, and showing the usual case of the hards not being needed for the race.
That's a concern for Lindblad. "I don't think I've got enough steering lock for the hairpin," he reports. However, he makes it around the corner, so case closed, maybe.
Into the run-off goes Leclerc at Mirabeau. It's an out lap, and he locked the fronts at very low speed.
Sergio Perez is the first driver out on the track, but the rest of the 22-driver field is quick to follow the Cadillac driver out of the pits.