Monaco Grand Prix 2026: Man runs on track in front of three cars in shocking incident

Red Bull, motorhome, Monaco, generic, 2023 — Photo: © IMAGO

Monaco Grand Prix

Man runs on track at Monaco Grand Prix in front of three cars

Narrow escape

Dan Ripley Global Editor

Professional F1 journalist and analyst

Sunday 7 June 2026 12:16 Updated: 12:26

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The Monaco Grand Prix weekend was hit with a huge safety scare on Sunday when a man escaped being hit by a racing car.

The main event at Monte Carlo is the Formula 1 grand prix on Sunday afternoon where Kimi Antonelli will start on pole position alongside the Red Bull of Max Verstappen, but it was an incident in the morning's F2 feature race ahead of the grand prix that caught everyone's attention.

In the F2 support race three cars peeled into the pits with a lap to go to take their mandatory pitstops, and by the slimmest of margins just avoided hitting a man running across the entrance to the pitlane.

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Cadillac's F1 driver Colton Herta, racing for Hitech was the lead car in a trio peeling into the pits with Nico Varrone of Van Amersfoort Racing and Joshua Durksen of Invicta Racing following close behind.

While the overall risk would have been reduced with the cars having to slow for the pit entrance, the potential danger for both drivers and the man in question were extremely high even with the cars slowing for the 37mph speed limit inside the pitlane having exited from the slow speed double apex Rascasse corner.

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Who won the Monaco F2 feature race

The race continued until the end with Nikola Tsolov winning for Campos Racing having forced race leader Rafael Camara of Invicta into an error at Ste Devote in turn one, with the Brazilian eventually retiring.

Rounding up the podium was Alex Dunne for Rodin Motorsport and Dino Beganovic, of the Ferrari F1 development programme, in third for DAMS.

The Tom Pryce incident

The dangers of spectators crossing a race track are sadly not new in motorsport with an infamous incident occurring during the 1977 South African Grand Prix involving F1 star Tom Pryce.

The promising British racing driver was driving for the Shadow team at Kyalami when two marshals noticed his team-mate Renzo Zorzi struggling to get out of his Shadow on lap 22 after he retired his car on the side of the circuit.

With the cars at full racing speeds, the marshals crossed the track to assist Zorzi when Pryce struck the second of the marshals Jansen van Vuuren at 170mph on the racing line having been unable to react in time to avoid a collision.

Van Vuuren was catapulted into the air and died instantly before landing near Zorzi's car, while Pryce also suffered fatal injuries after the fire extinguisher Van Vuuren was carrying struck jolted his crash helmet up sharply. Pryce's car continued down the straight before crashing at the next corner.