@SChecoPerez holds-off @Carlossainz55 to claim third-career victory at the #MonacoGP. #F1

Perez Monaco GP victory – Sergio Perez held off Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz in a twice red-flagged race to clinch victory at the Monaco GP, with early race leader Charles Leclerc finishing fourth as Red Bull outfoxed the Scuderia in mixed conditions.

 

 

Max Verstappen extended his Driver’s Championship lead over Leclerc with third place over the home race favourite, who had dominated the early proceedings that followed a long delay due to heavy rain soaking the streets of Monte Carlo.

 

Rain began to fall before the scheduled race time, which was pushed back at first by nine minutes before it was extended to 16 with a safety car deployed – on safety grounds from the FIA because there had been no prior running in the wet over the weekend – and in the gap the band of rain intensified.

 

The cars were sent out for two formation tours behind the safety car, with proceedings halted at the end of the second as the rain was falling to such a level that areas of standing water formed, with rivers running around La Rascasse as the pack went by, heading to the pits.

 

The cars remained there for 50 minutes before they re-emerged behind the safety car in a second formation lap procedure, which meant all cars were fitted with the blue side-walled full extreme wet rubber.

 

After two laps behind the safety car – taking the first two from the new race distance from 77 and during which Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll tapped the barrier at Massenet and suffered a right-rear puncture and his fellow Canadian-compatriot Nicholas Latifi crashed his Williams FW44 entry at the hairpin with low-speed, damaging his front wing – the race began with a rolling start at the end of the third tour.

 

Leclerc lead the pack, ahead of team-mate Sainz, Perez and Verstappen – his F1-75 racer fish-tailing around as he planted the throttle for the first time down the main-straight but staying in the right direction as the Ferrari driver lead the pack in St. Devote.

 

They made it through incident-free but spread out, many drivers coming side-ways out of Casino Square as Leclerc pulled to a 1.8 second lead by the end of the first lap as the Ferrari pairing lit-up their tyres quicker than the chasing Red Bull’s behind.

 

Leclerc soon moved clear of Sainz – the two Ferrari drivers quicker at different parts of the Circuit De Monaco, with the Monegasque driver regularly pulling a second clear through the first sector before Sainz gained a few tenths back in the second and third sectors as they worked their way down into the 1:30’s range.

 

By the 15^th tour, Leclerc was leading by five seconds, as the front-runners discussed with their teams whether to switch to the green-marked intermediates as AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly, Stroll and Latifi had done ahead of the race rolling-start.

 

Sainz insisted to remain out and going immediately on stints was the best option for the Scuderia, but it’s hand was forced when Perez, who had wanted inters, put them on at the end of the 16^th lap.

 

The Mexican’s pace was so strong on that tyre that when Ferrari brought Leclerc in on lap 18, with Verstappen following suit and both taking intermediates, Perez jumped ahead and quickly chased down the other F1-75 of Sainz.

 

The Spaniard lead until the 21^st tour, by which time Perez was only a few seconds behind the Ferrari despite having already pitted and Sainz completed a slippery out-lap, Red Bull brought Perez and Verstappen in.

 

As they exited the pits on the 23^rd lap, Verstappen appeared to get very close to the pit-lane exit line and narrowly over it, Perez had jumped Sainz to take P1, with Verstappen slotting into third place ahead of title-rival Leclerc who was fourth.

 

The former dominant leader was brought in for a second time a few seconds behind team-mate Sainz, Ferrari giving Leclerc confusing radio messages about whether or not to come in and double-stack it’s drivers.

 

Now all the leaders were on the C3 white-marked harder compounds, but this time the Red Bull’s appeared to have better tyre warm-up – Sainz nearly losing his car as he ran closely behind Perez at the end of the 23^rd tour.

 

Just as Perez was starting to secure the lead he had gained whilst Sainz was saving his side-ways scary moment, and then defending from Verstappen and the furious Leclerc behind, the race was disrupted again.

 

Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher was the first driver to put on a set of hards at the end of lap 18 and as he fought with Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu, he dropped his VF-22 racer running between the two Swimming Pool chicanes.

 

The impact was not at high-speeds, but the angles and forces saw the VF-22 split in two and as a result the barrier needed repairing and clearing a large amount of debris, with the red flags brought out again after the incident was initially covered by the deployment of the VSC then the full safety car.

 

After the 20-minute stoppage, Perez lead the field back out for another rolling start after two more laps behind the safety car – the order behind Sainz, Verstappen, Leclerc, Mercedes’ George Russell, and McLaren’s Lando Norris, who had lost out to his fellow British-compatriot by taking on intermediates for a few tours and the Mercedes remained out on full wets for several laps before going straight back to slicks.

 

When the race went green on lap 33, with the Ferrari’s on the same sets of hards they had been running before the second red flag, Perez and Verstappen were on fresh sets of C4 yellow-marked medium tyres. Perez was unchallenged into St. Devote.

 

The Mexican suffered a big lock-up into Mirabeau, but still had built of almost a second as the field returned to racing speeds in the 1:23’s range.

 

A few tours later they were into the 1:18’s, with the Ferrari F1-75 entries not falling back with slow tyre warm-up despite being on scrub set of the harder rubber.

 

But as the leaders exchanged fastest laps between the four cars over the next stage of the Grand Prix, DRS was now enabled and the pace reached the 1:16’s, Perez began to pull clear, and Leclerc, unable to stay in the 1:16’s, lost ground to Verstappen in fourth place.

 

By the 45^th tour, Perez’s gap was 2.2 seconds over Sainz, and his main concern became catching the rear of the pack to lap the tailenders – a long snake having formed behind Alpine’s Fernando Alonso, who had fallen back from Norris whilst leading Mercedes’ Sir Lewis Hamilton and Alpine’s Esteban Ocon.

 

But 10 tours later, Ferrari’s hopes for Perez’s tyres to grain and wear finally arrived as the race leader fell back into the 1:18’s range, which meant Sainz rapidly evaporated his lead and closed in to under a second, with Verstappen doing the same and Leclerc also able to erase his earlier losses.

 

Ferrari urged Sainz to pressure Perez as the leaders encountered traffic – the trailing Verstappen not struggling as much keeping his medium tyres alive to the end, which by this point was the two-hour time limit after the repeated delays.

 

A final 10-lap charge ensued, with Sainz at first threatening to make a move into the Nouvelle Chicane, but got closest, and twice nearly ran into the back of Perez, at Fairmont Hairpin.

 

But a brave move for first place never came, with Verstappen not attempting to put a bold overtake on Sainz and Leclerc was kept at bay in fourth as a tense stable ending took place.

 

Perez completed the 64 laps and crossed the line to take the Monaco GP victory by 1.154 seconds over Sainz, who was just 0.3 seconds ahead of Verstappen, with the top four all covered by just 2.9 seconds.

 

Russell finished a quiet fifth for the Silver Arrows, having being steadily dropped off by the leaders in the tours after the second rolling start, with Norris pitting during the charge to the flag as he had enough of a gap behind thanks to Alonso’s slow pace, but the McLaren driver remained sixth.

 

Alonso’s lap-times did improve as the finish approached as he finished four seconds clear of Hamilton, who battled with Ocon ahead of the second red flag.

 

The duo tangled at St. Devote at one stage, for which Ocon was hit with a five-second time penalty that relegated the Frenchman out of the points from ninth on the track behind Hamilton at the finish.

 

This promoted Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas to ninth, as Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel rounded out the top ten.

 

Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Gasly was 11^th and in-front of the aforementioned Ocon who took 12^th and McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo who was 13^th and Stroll in 14^th.

 

The two other drivers who failed to finish were Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon who stopped in the pits ahead of the closing proceedings and Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen who was forced to retire due to a water pressure loss just before team-mate Schumacher’s shunt.

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2022 Monaco GP – The Top Three

 

 

2022 Monaco GP Winner – Sergio Perez, #11, Oracle Red Bull Racing-RBPT, RB18:

“It’s a dream come true, as a driver you dream of winning here. After your home race, there is no more special weekend. With the graining, to not make any mistakes, to keep Carlos behind was not easy. It’s a massive day for myself and my country.”

 

2^nd Place – Carlos Sainz, #55, Scuderia Ferrari, F1-75:

“It was, it was, we did everything we had to, my out-lap stuck behind a lapped car cost me the race win. You can understand my frustration, it’s how sport is sometimes. Checo was unlucky in Jeddah, today he drove a great race.”

 

3^rd Place – Max Verstappen, #1, Oracle Red Bull Racing-RBPT, RB18:

“I did the best I could after yesterday. I think as a team we did a really good job with the strategy; it was a very hectic one, but I think we executed it well and I extended my points lead which I didn’t expect last night!”

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Formula 1 Grand Prix De Monaco 2022 Race Results Classification (64 Laps)

POS	NO	DRIVER	CAR	LAPS	TIME/RETIRED	PTS
1	11	Sergio Perez	RED BULL RACING RBPT	64	1:56:30.265	25
2	55	Carlos Sainz	FERRARI	64	+1.154s	18
3	1	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING RBPT	64	+1.491s	15
4	16	Charles Leclerc	FERRARI	64	+2.922s	12
5	63	George Russell	MERCEDES	64	+11.968s	10
6	4	Lando Norris	MCLAREN MERCEDES	64	+12.231s	9
7	14	Fernando Alonso	ALPINE RENAULT	64	+46.358s	6
8	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES	64	+50.388s	4
9	77	Valtteri Bottas	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	64	+52.525s	2
10	5	Sebastian Vettel	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	64	+53.536s	1
11	10	Pierre Gasly	ALPHATAURI RBPT	64	+54.289s	0
12	31	Esteban Ocon	ALPINE RENAULT	64	+55.644s	0
13	3	Daniel Ricciardo	MCLAREN MERCEDES	64	+57.635s	0
14	18	Lance Stroll	ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES	64	+60.802s	0
15	6	Nicholas Latifi	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	63	+1 lap	0
16	24	Zhou Guanyu	ALFA ROMEO FERRARI	63	+1 lap	0
17	22	Yuki Tsunoda	ALPHATAURI RBPT	63	+1 lap	0
NC	23	Alexander Albon	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	48	DNF	0
NC	47	Mick Schumacher	HAAS FERRARI	24	DNF	0
NC	20	Kevin Magnussen	HAAS FERRARI	19	DNF	0

* Provisional results

https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1112/monaco/race-result.html

 

Click here for the 2022 Formula 1 World Driver’s (Top 10) and Constructors Championship Standings.

 

Round eight of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship returns to the streets of Baku in Azerbaijan for the Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix 2022 from Friday June 10-Sunday June 12.

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