Sergio Perez wins the Monaco Grand Prix. Carlos Sainz and his teammate Max Verstappen followed him, after Leclerc dropped from pole to P4.
Quali Results and Starting Grid
photo via @fia.official instagram.
It’s race day in ‘sunny’ Monaco, but rain started to fall and quickly intensified as the pre-race activities occurred. This made the teams get the wet tyres out on the grid. The FIA race director announced the race was gonna start 5 minutes late before saying the formation lap will start at 15.09 local time.
He then announced that the formation lap would start behind the safety car. At the new starting time, the race was delayed again due to heavy rain, race control instructed that all drivers will start on wet tyres.
As the drivers completed not one but 2 formation laps behind Bernd Maylander (safety car driver), they reported that the rain is way too heavy and once they returned to the pit lane, the race was red-flagged and will start with a 10-minute warning from race control.
Almost 50 minutes later after the race was supposed to start, the race had a rolling start. Not long in the laps, Latifi crashed into the barriers which caused him damage to his front wing and his fellow Canadian, Stroll hit the barriers and had a puncture to his right rear.
Gasly, Stroll and Latifi pitted for interest and the Canadians almost collide in the pits.
In lap 5, Leclerc was told that there is gonna be no rain for the next 20 minutes, and in lap 7 we see Vettel, Tsunoda, Magnussen, Zhou and Ricciardo pitting. Gasly makes the fastest lap on inters.
Russell pushes Norris from behind and the McLaren engineers tell him to approach plan B, he responds that he is at 100% pace. Russell goes over the Nouvelle Chicane and loses half a second to Norris.
In lap 11, Gasly puts pressure on Zhou for P13 and he goes past him in lap 13, in the next lap he goes past Ricciardo. Two overtakes in Monaco from Pierre Gasly! In Monaco, it is very hard to overtake so that took us by surprise definitely.
Perez told his engineers: ‘it’s definitely inters now.’ but Sainz says he is going to go straight to dry. In the next laps, we see a few drivers pitting for inters and Sainz is told to stay out for now. (lap 15-17)
Ocon and Hamilton make contact. Leclerc and Verstappen are told to box, Sainz, is leading ahead of Perez. (lap 18)
Ricciardo, Zhou and Latifi are pitting for hards. Sainz and Leclerc are both told to pit but the engineer makes an error and told Leclerc to stay out but it is too late. Leclerc down in P5. Norris pits after and goes after Leclerc in P5.
By lap 24, the top 5 changes and it’s Perez, Sainz, Verstappen, Leclerc and Russell. Suddenly a message appears that Magnussen is out of the race?!
LAP 27 and it’s a yellow flag in the 3rd sector, it’s Mick Schumacher!!! A massive crash for the driver as his Haas’ splits in half! Thankfully, he is ok and out of the car! Safety Car is deployed. The barrier needs repairing so it’s a RED FLAG. Cars return to the pit lane.
A message is shown from the race control that the race will restart at 17:15 local time with a rolling start.
“Quick recap: Perez leads from Sainz, Verstappen and Leclerc. The race was red-flagged on lap 30 for Schumacher’s crash and will restart at 17:15 local time with a rolling restart. Then, all being well, it’ll be 45 minutes of racing to the finish.”-@autosportlive on Twitter.
Before the restart, race control said that ‘the lapped cars may overtake once the race has resumed’ cars: 18, 22, 24, 6, 23.
At the restart, everyone is on Medium and Hard tyres.
Max Verstappen is told that there are ’29 laps expected’ to the end of the race.
Ocon gets a 5-second time penalty for causing the collision with Hamilton.
After maybe 35 laps a 34-minute timer has appeared on the screen. 30 minutes remain and the DRS is enabled.
As the race went on I was losing a little bit of track writing down all the things that are happening so here are tweets from @autosportlive
Alonso is leading an F1 car train from his position in seventh all the way down to Albon in 18th. The Alpine is half a minute behind Norris, while the leaders will catch this train before the end.
“They [the leaders] are behind me?” Hamilton asks over the team radio. “They are 30 seconds behind this train,” is the response from Pete Bonnington. What an odd race this has become. “
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Sainz cuts the chicane with 18 minutes left and loses a few seconds behind Perez. Zhou loses control of the rears as he tries to go past Tsunoda with 15 minutes left.
Albon retires his Williams with 15 minutes to go.
13 minutes left, Sainz is told to put pressure on Perez.
Ocon tells his engineers that Fernando needs to push as he is stuck behind him and Hamilton.
10 minutes to go in the race! The race is on lap 61 so full points will be awarded.
2 minutes to go, Lando is fastest after he pitted for mediums!
Times is off and we have one lap to go.
PEREZ WINS THE MONACO GRAND PRIX 2022 WITH SAINZ IN 2 AND VERSTAPPEN IN 3!!
TOP 10:
Perez
Sainz
Verstappen
Leclerc
Russell
Norris
Alonso
Hamilton
Bottas
Vettel
If you want to see these updates live during the race click here
NEXT ROUND: BAKU🇦🇿 10-12 JUNE
