Norris leads from the front to breathe life into title race

A debut win at Monaco is a special moment for any driver and Lando Norris duly drunk in the atmosphere as he revelled in his victory having finally conquered the challenging test on the streets of Monte Carlo.

- Giles Richards

For the McLaren driver it has reignited his championship charge but as for the race itself, which had hoped for something of a reboot of its own with mandatory pit stops imposed, the brave new world had an awfully familiar sense of deja vu.

Norris's win was without doubt a nerveless display of precision execution by driver and team worthy of note and of victory, as he held off Ferrari's Charles Leclerc in second, with his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri in third. Max Verstappen was fourth for Red Bull and Lewis Hamilton in fifth for Ferrari.

Norris had led from pole and once he had held off Leclerc into Sainte Devote by the narrowest of margins, he had the race by the scruff of the neck and did not let go. His team principal, Andrea Stella, was spot-on in describing it as cold-blooded in how clinically he delivered and it has brought him to within three points of title leader Piastri, with Verstappen 25 points back in third.

Yet across the 78 laps there were again no on-track overtakes, with Hamilton making up places when Fernando Alonso retired and through a pit stop over Isack Hadjar. Perhaps the expectations were simply too high. F1 had rightly sought to address the limitations imposed by the circuit that held its first race in 1929, after a procession last year in which the top 10 finished in exactly their grid order.