Leclerc Finally Wins His Home Race at Monaco 2024

Charles Leclerc started from pole and finished on the top step of the podium at the Circuit de Monaco — a sentence that had seemed perpetually out of reach until 26 May 2024. The Monégasque driver converted P1 on the grid into 25 championship points for [Ferrari](/teams/ferrari), completing the kind of clean sweep Monaco demands and rarely grants.

The Front Row Held — Monaco Did Its Job

The top seven drivers finished in exactly the order they started. That is not a coincidence at a circuit where the racing line is barely wide enough for one car, let alone two. [Charles Leclerc](/drivers/leclerc) led from lights to flag, with [Oscar Piastri](/drivers/piastri) holding P2 for [McLaren](/teams/mclaren) from his second-on-the-grid starting position. [Carlos Sainz](/drivers/sainz) completed the picture by taking P3, giving Ferrari a first and third — a constructors' haul of 40 points from a single afternoon in Monte Carlo.

Leclerc's Monaco Record Rewritten

For a driver who grew up in Monaco and built much of his early reputation around the streets of his home city, the win carried weight beyond the 25 points. Leclerc had been painfully close on multiple previous occasions — mechanical failures and strategic calls had denied him — making 2024 the race where the Monaco narrative finally resolved itself cleanly. He took pole, led throughout, and won. No ambiguity, no asterisks.

The full 2024 season context for Leclerc is available on the [2024 season](/seasons/2024) page, where his championship trajectory across all rounds is tracked.

McLaren's Constructors Haul

While the spotlight fell on Leclerc, [McLaren](/teams/mclaren) left Monaco with 30 points between Piastri's second place and [Lando Norris](/drivers/norris) finishing fourth from fourth on the grid. That is a clean double-points result from a team that was pressing hard on Ferrari and Red Bull in the constructors' standings through the middle of the 2024 season.

Norris in P4 and Piastri in P2 represented exactly the kind of consistent upper-order finishes McLaren needed. Neither driver had the pace advantage to go past Ferrari's front row, but both held their positions and brought home the points. A [comparison of Piastri and Norris across the 2024 season](/compare?d1=piastri&d2=norris) shows how closely matched they were in qualifying pace and race conversion throughout the year.

Verstappen and Mercedes Off the Pace

[Max Verstappen](/drivers/max_verstappen) classified sixth, one position worse than his sixth-on-the-grid starting spot, taking 8 points for [Red Bull](/teams/red_bull). For a driver and team that had been dominant across the 2024 season's early rounds, Monaco underlined the circuit-specific limits of the RB20 — or at least the difficulty of converting raw pace into positions when overtaking is not on the table and qualifying does not go your way.

[George Russell](/drivers/russell) was best of the [Mercedes](/teams/mercedes) pair in P5, ahead of [Lewis Hamilton](/drivers/hamilton) in P7. Hamilton did claim the fastest lap of the race, the one stat a driver in seventh can actually influence, adding a bonus point to his tally. It was a quiet weekend by Hamilton's standards — fifth and seventh from fifth and seventh on the grid says everything about how processional the top seven were through the 78 laps.

The Points Behind P7

[Yuki Tsunoda](/drivers/tsunoda) brought [RB F1 Team](/teams/rb) a P8 finish despite ending the race a lap down, collecting 4 points. [Alexander Albon](/drivers/albon) took P9 and 2 points for [Williams](/teams/williams) — a strong result for a team operating on a fraction of the top constructors' budgets. [Pierre Gasly](/drivers/gasly) rounded out the top ten for [Alpine F1 Team](/teams/alpine), a single point from P10.

All three were lapped, which reflects Monaco's unusual geometry rather than any catastrophic pace deficit. The field compresses through the barriers, and the gaps in lap time that would mean nothing at Silverstone translate into insurmountable race deficits at Monte Carlo.

What It Meant for the 2024 Season

Round 8 of the [2024 season](/seasons/2024) handed Ferrari a weekend to remember — 40 points, a dominant pole-to-win performance from their home driver, and a clean one-three on the podium. For Leclerc specifically, it closed a chapter that had been open far too long. Monaco, for once, had no mechanical drama, no strategic regrets, and no footnotes. Just a Monégasque driver winning in Monaco.

For a deeper look at how Leclerc's 2024 season shaped up relative to Sainz, the [compare tool](/compare?d1=leclerc&d2=sainz) has their full head-to-head across every round.