Simulation
Tesla Roadster vs Formula 1 at Monaco
Two minimum-lap-time optimisations of the Circuit de Monaco, one for a 2026 Formula 1 car released from its sporting rules and one for the street-legal Tesla Roadster, each with a full 14-degree-of-freedom vehicle model integrated into the nonlinear program, from a standing start to the flag.
A Road Car at Monaco
Monaco is the slowest circuit on the Formula 1 calendar, which is what makes the question worth asking: over one standing-start lap, how close can a street-legal road car get to a 2026 Formula 1 car? Each car runs alone, driven to its own optimum.
The F1 car was run without its sporting rules, so the comparison is between machines rather than regulations. It keeps its physical limits — fuel flow, the 350 kW MGU-K, the 4 MJ store — but loses the deployment curves, the energy cap and the straight-mode aero zones, which makes it quicker than anything that will actually qualify there, where the 2026 pole stands at 1:12.051.
One Model, One Optimiser
Both cars are built as 14-degree-of-freedom vehicle models — six for the sprung body, four wheel heaves, four wheel spins — with nonlinear Pacejka tyres, Ackermann steering, suspension, aerodynamics and each car's own actuators.
The lap is then an optimal control problem in the distance domain, with that model integrated into the nonlinear program: direct collocation on roughly 1060 nodes, graded to a few centimetres at the start so the launch is resolved, assembled in CasADi with exact derivatives and solved with IPOPT. There is no driver model and no prescribed line. Steering, braking, drive and regenerative torque, active aero and the Roadster's fan and valve commands all fall out of the optimisation, bounded by tyre limits, energy stores and track edges. The Roadster is the weaker half of the input data: Tesla has published no mass breakdown, aero coefficients or fan curves. Where reported figures diverged, the more conservative was taken, so the estimates err against the car rather than for it.
Where the Lap Is Won and Lost
Wing downforce grows with the square of speed, so at 60 to 100 km/h the F1 car has about 1 kN of it. The Roadster's fans do not need speed to work: through the same corners they are pulling 26 to 33 kN, with all four wheels driven. Where the track is slowest that inverts the usual order: 2.58 g of lateral grip against 2.19 g, 2.16 g of traction against 1.48 g, and 47 km/h through the Grand Hotel hairpin against 38 km/h. The start is more lopsided still: 40 kN of cold-gas thrust needs no grip at all — 0 to 100 km/h in 0.87 s against 1.98 s, and a 1.08 s lead after 150 metres.
The F1 car takes it back wherever the track opens up, where its wings come into their own and the fans are long past their best: 3.7 g against 2.5 g in the fast corners, 4.6 g against 2.8 g under braking, on less than half the mass. Through the tunnel and the Swimming Pool it recovers almost all of it, arriving at Rascasse 0.07 s behind.
The Result
The Roadster holds on to the line: 1:09.88 against 1:10.09, a margin of 0.21 s over 3.29 km. It is thin, and it rests on the fan downforce: about 3% less and the F1 car wins.
What decides the lap is which kind of downforce the circuit rewards. Monaco spends most of its length below the speed at which wings do their work, and that is the narrow window where mechanical suction and grip-independent thrust outweigh a 1,300 kg mass advantage and far stickier tyres. The same two cars at Spa would not be close: the result marks out the conditions under which an unconventional downforce mechanism beats a conventional one, rather than crowning a faster car.
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