Max Verstappen’s Monaco Grand Prix ended before it ever got going. The four-time world champion failed to launch from his P2 grid spot, rolled through the opening moments with an engine problem, and retired at the end of his first lap with zero points.
That is why the f1 results from Monte Carlo mattered immediately on Sunday. Verstappen had lined up behind Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli after qualifying second on Saturday, and after a weekend Red Bull described as strong, he was expecting at least a shot at the podium in a race where he has won twice before.
Verstappen did not hide how costly the failure felt. He said it was painful for everyone and that, after feeling good all weekend, he had hoped to do something useful or at least make the race more interesting. Instead, he was left watching the chance slip away as the car refused to behave from the start.
He said the problem began before the race had properly settled in. The engine was acting strangely in the pre-start, he said, then “basically dropped dead” when he let out the clutch. At one point, he said, only the battery helped the car move forward, before the engine sounded badly enough that the team told him to bring it back slowly rather than risk destroying it completely by running flat out.
That left Red Bull with no recovery path on a circuit where passing is notoriously difficult and track position is everything. Verstappen had arrived in Monaco as one of the front-runners after Saturday’s qualifying session, but the start-time failure turned a likely podium fight into a retirement almost immediately. The car never reached the stage where race pace could matter.
The result also sharpens a wider problem for Verstappen and Red Bull. Monaco was his second DNF of the 2026 season, after he retired in China because of an issue with his Red Bull RB22. For a driver used to turning strong weekends into points, this was a rare blank at one of the sport’s most unforgiving venues.
What happens next is the part Red Bull has not yet answered in public: the exact fault that triggered the engine trouble at the start. Until that is cleared up, Verstappen’s weekend in Monaco stands as a lost podium chance and a reminder that even from P2, one bad launch can end everything in a heartbeat.
