Verstappen labels Monaco retirement "painful" after engine failure

A Weekend of Promise, an Afternoon Cut Short

Max Verstappen's Monaco Grand Prix unravelled before it had even truly begun. The four-time World Champion, who had qualified in P2 behind Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli, was left stranded on the grid at the start as the rest of the field surged away from him. He briefly managed to coax the car forward using battery power alone, but by the end of his first lap, the Red Bull was in the garage — and his race was over.

"After such a nice weekend for us, you'd at least hope to be on the podium," Verstappen said in the media pen after his retirement. "We of course then retired basically straight away. It's painful for everyone. There's also no need to be super upset because I think everyone is already really disappointed about it."

Engine Behaving "Very Weird" from the Outset

Verstappen was candid about the sequence of events that brought his race to a halt, describing problems that had been present even before lights out.

"I think already the formation lap wasn't particularly great, but then in the pre-start the engine was responding very weird," he explained. "Normally at one point you find your RPM target, but the engine basically was not doing that, and when I dropped the clutch it basically dropped dead."

Once the battery briefly propelled him forward, it became clear that pushing on would cause greater damage. "The engine sounded really bad as soon as I had a bit of power back, and I'm sure if I just would have gone flat-out within the lap I would have destroyed it completely — so they told me to bring it back slowly."

A Second DNF in 2026

The retirement at Monaco marks Verstappen's second DNF of the 2026 season, having previously been forced out of the Chinese Grand Prix due to a separate issue with his Red Bull RB22. For a championship contender, two non-scores in six rounds represent a significant and growing concern — and Sunday in Monte Carlo, a circuit where Verstappen has won twice, will feel like one of the most costly of all.