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The 2024 Monaco Grand Prix might not have been the most exciting race of the season with the top ten starting and finishing in exactly the same order, but it still packed a punch with a historic and emotional home win for Charles Leclerc, a difficult weekend for Red Bull, and a couple of major accidents at the start of the race.
Kevin Magnussen (Accident, Lap 1): 3.5/10
Let's give credit where it's due: Kevin Magnussen was evenly matched with his Haas team mate in practice and ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in both of Friday's sessions. They both made it through to the second round of qualifying, but any slender hopes they might have had of picking up points were dashed when Haas was excluded from the results of qualifying because of a DRS infringement and made to start from the back. Magnussen's eagerness to make up places led to him spinning Sergio Perez in Beau Rivage, triggering an accident and a red flag. Magnussen's day was over and frankly he was lucky not to pick up a penalty - others have had much worse for a lot less - or else he would be sitting out the next race in Canada.
Nico Hulkenberg (Accident, Lap 1): 5.5/10
Very much the innocent party of the first lap accident that brought out the red flag, Nico Hulkenberg didn't do anything wrong this weekend but was twice the victim of circumstance. The other was the exclusion from the results of qualifying of both himself and team mate Kevin Magnussen, when Haas was deemed to have breached the rules governing the rear wing on the VF-24. It meant Hulkenberg was forced to start from the back, which ended up putting him right in the thick of the accident at the start. Even without that, starting from 12th place gave him only an outside chance of points this weekend. He'd struggled to match Magnussen's pace on Friday practice, so all in all this was not a great outing for the German.
