Damon Hill
1996 world champion on BBC Radio 5 Live in Monaco

I think it could be drama for both of them [Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen], Ferrari are very happy with how their cars go off the line. The question is, is there room on either side for one of the Ferraris to leapfrog these guys. Will one of them be forced to take the escape road? They are going to try, I guarantee it.

Nearly all the drivers are starting on the medium compound at lights out, with the two Cadillacs of Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas further back on the softs.

Gabriel Bortoleto, starting from the pit lane now, is also a soft runner.

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Rosanna Tennant, Harry Benjamin, F1 correspondent Andrew Benson and 1996 F1 world champion Damon Hill are in position on 5 Live and ready to take us through this Monaco Grand Prix.

To tune in, click the 'listen live' page at the top of this page, following along via the BBC Sounds app if you're out and about today or you can ask your smart speaker to "play 5 Live".

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Speaking during the drivers' parade earlier, Charles Leclerc said "hope is high" thanks to Ferrari's excellent starts this season - and the Italian team have been the pre-race favourites all week - but he added: "In the last race (in Canada) Mercedes and Red Bull did a big step forward, but they are a bit inconsistent, so I hope we can take advantage of that."

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Mercedes have won every main race this season - and two out of the three sprint events - and lead second-placed Ferrari by 72 points.

McLaren in third are starting outside the top six today while rivals Red Bull in fourth have Isack Hadjar in fifth and Max Verstappen on the front row in P2.

Alpine in fifth and Racing Bulls in sixth have got one driver each in the top 10 at lights out, so there's potential for both teams to grab a point or two.

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Five races down and Kimi Antonelli, in only his second year in Formula 1, is top of the drivers' championship and ahead of Mercedes team-mate George Russell by 43 points, with Charles Leclerc in third, 56 points adrift.

Monaco could see the Ferrari drivers change places in the standings, as only three points separates Leclerc and fourth-placed Lewis Hamilton before we go racing today. Same goes for four-time world champion Max Verstappen in seventh and sixth-placed Oscar Piastri.

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Kimi Antonelli is on pole position, Max Verstappen is alongside him on the front row and Lewis Hamilton in the fast-starting Ferrari is third - will this be the top three after 78 laps of the Monaco Grand Prix?

If you head over here, you can predict where all 22 drivers will finish today's race. Our predictor shows the current championship standings, but just move the drivers around to pick your final order.

Damon Hill
1996 world champion on BBC Radio 5 Live in Monaco

I had to fight my way through the celebrities to get in. I'm excited to be here. I've just thought of a brilliant new name for racing, car-dashian. There is a lot of celebrities, there is a lot of excitement. Genuine excitement because we do have one of the most amazing displays of brilliance in the cockpit. What is going to happen? We don't know.

It can go right, or it can go wrong [starting on pole]. You can win it from second, from third, very rarely but it can happen.

Liam Lawson was looking a bit nervous earlier on while his Racing Bulls team was working on his car. The New Zealander is up and running and made it out of the pit lane, but Audi's Gabriel Bortoleto is in a spot of bother.

The Brazilian was stranded before his reconnaissance laps and he's just told Martin Brundle during his grid walk on Sky Sports he'll have to start the race from the pit lane.

Bortoleto was set to line up P16 on the grid.

Andrew Benson
BBC F1 correspondent in Monaco

Image source, Pirelli 2026

Race strategy in Monaco always follows fundamentally the same model. It’s a one-stop race because of the difficulty of overtaking, and the focus is on track position.

The start will be key.

Can pole-winner Kimi Antonelli manage not to lose a place off the line in his Mercedes for the first time all year? Max Verstappen beside him and Lewis Hamilton right behind will be waiting to pounce.

Once that’s out of the way, Pirelli says the fastest strategy is to start on the soft and then switch to the hard. The medium is also a viable tyre for either the start or the second stint. But the soft is likely to be favoured because it gives better grip off the line, and no one will want to lose position.

The key strategic decision is when to stop - drivers need a gap to fall into, so as to run at their optimum pace without traffic. But if a driver feels faster than a car in front, does he stop first and try to gain time on fresh tyres, or wait and try to do so on the used tyres if they still have life?

Waiting to stop in the hope of a safety car is also a viable strategy - there’s a 72% historic likelihood of one happening. It’s likely to be a slow-burn race before the drama around the stops. And if there’s an early crash and safety car, some drivers will stop for fresh tyres and aim to go to the end.

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The last overtake for the lead in Monaco was many, many moons ago - either Michele Alboreto on Alain Prost in 1985 or Damon Hill passing Jean Alesi in 1996, so take you pick. But with 'yo-yo racing' a huge talking point with the new regulations this season, is there even a small shred of hope that we'll see a bona fide move made on track today?

So, if we imagine every driver has made it through the opening lap in the same positions, do you think we'll see any overtakes in Monte Carlo in 2026?

Click the left thumb for zero overtakes, or hit the right thumb for one or more.

You can also have a read of Andrew Benson's Monaco and 'yo-yo racing' story here

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Ferrari's Charles Leclerc on still being surprised by the atmosphere in Monaco: "It feels like there's even more people, it's always packed but since Wednesday it's been quite crazy and the amount of support is super nice. This always gives me motivation, there is still a bit of disappoint from yesterday's qualifying but at the same time having this support gives me a bit of a smile back."

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Charles Leclerc will take his place on the second row in P4 at his home race in Monaco but the Ferrari driver said his weekend so far has been tough. "I’ve been struggling to get the right feeling in the car and have been facing some issues," he added.

Leclerc was briefly on provisional pole before Kimi Antonelli, Max Verstappen and team-mate Lewis Hamilton improved. But in a bid to regain the top spot on his final flying lap, he thumped the barriers at Tabac, breaking his rear suspension.

The Monegasque driver said if you don't have full confidence in Monte Carlo qualifying, "you can pay the price". So, what will Leclerc's confidence levels be today with three cars ahead of him on a circuit with very little room to wiggle past a competitor?

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Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton who will start the Monaco Grand Prix in third: “Time will tell [if he can get his start right]. It depends very much on the two cars ahead.

“We’ll try to get the best start we can and see what happens from there.”

On unpredictable starts and Ferrari's strong starts: "At the beginning, it was because we had taken decisions to benefit our starts, so the others didn't, now they have changed it so every one has similar starts."

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Lewis Hamilton looked sharp as he entered the paddock earlier on (and he was all on his own, wink, wink), ready to line-up third on today's grid in Monaco.

The seven-time world champion, whose last win here was in 2019, said he didn’t quite have the same confidence in the car that he felt in free practice. Still, he beat out his team-mate Charles Leclerc, who starts fourth, and added he was pleased with how tight the margins were between the top four cars in qualifying.

With a shot at another podium finish this weekend, Hamilton said looking forward "to the opportunity to bring home a strong result."

Following his second place in Canada, Hamilton also spoke of how he is building a positive raport with his new race engineer, Carlo Santi, saying the 52-year-old "is like my Italian Bono".

Andrew Benson
BBC F1 correspondent in Monaco

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McLaren are celebrating becoming only the second team to take part in 1,000 Grands Prix but the weekend has not gone the way they wanted.

They arrived here not only as reigning world champions but as last year’s winners, and on Thursday they collected many of their former drivers on the grid for a photoshoot with the team’s first F1 car, the M2B and the latest one.

They came here fancied by some, after locking out the second row in Canada two weeks ago, but they have not been competitive all weekend, and Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris line up together on the fourth row.

Team principal Andrea Stella said he was expecting at least one car to make it onto the third row, so admitted it was “a bit disappointing” not to achieve that.

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"We were expecting the overall competitiveness to be difficult at this circuit, for two main technical factors,” Stella said. "We know that from a chassis point of view, we lack grip overall, and we have a clear objective in terms of improving the grip and, in particular, the aerodynamic load. The second technical factor is that the MCL40, partly by design, and partly because we want to improve this factor as well, it's very gentle on the tyres.

"And when you have events where you actually have to be good at introducing energy and heat in the tyres, then we struggle a bit. So, it was not an easy task to find the right window for the tyres."

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Red Bull's Max Verstappen who will start the race in second: "Try not to overthink it too much, that works best. We will try to do the best start we can. It is a long race, anything can happen. It is not always easy and I hope today, we can have a normal start."