“Checo, you won Monaco! What a brilliant, brilliant race,” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner yelled at his protégé via radio into the cockpit. The aforementioned Red Bull driver Sergio Perez was the celebrated winner of the Formula 1 classic in the Principality yesterday, which after a chaotic course of the race with two crashes and pouring rain again became a small disaster for Ferrari. Perez won ahead of Scuderia driver Carlos Sainz and world champion Max Verstappen in the second Red Bull. Polesitter Charles Leclerc, whose crew messed up one of his pit stops, had to make do with fourth place.
The race started more than an hour late. It started to rain just under ten minutes before the scheduled start time at 3 p.m., for safety reasons it was postponed ten minutes and then another six minutes. The narrow route is considered particularly risky when it rains because there are no run-off zones. After a few minutes behind the safety car, which was initially only supposed to lead the formation lap, the session was stopped due to the increasingly heavy rain.
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The cars lined up in the pit lane and were covered with umbrellas and tents. At 4:05 p.m. the rain had stopped, and the next attempt followed behind the safety car piloted by birthday boy Bernd Mayländer (51). After two laps, which already counted towards the official number of laps, Leclerc led a rolling start and opened race mode on the still soaking wet track. As the track dried out, everyone had to find the right time to switch to the optimal set of tyres. The entire field started on rain tires. At the end of the 16th lap, Perez took the intermediate solution and thus managed to undercut Leclerc, who, like Verstappen, was two laps later. Sainz, on the other hand, stayed out longer in his rain gear and switched straight to dry tires.
After his second stop, Perez was wafer-thin ahead of Sainz, Leclerc had lost third place to Verstappen because Ferrari had just brought him into the pits after Sainz. When the command “stay outside” came over the radio, the Monegasque was already in the pit lane and had to wait briefly until the Spaniard’s car was cleared. The 24-year-old reacted accordingly sourly on the team radio.
Wild Schumacher crash
On lap 28, the safety car came out again after Mick Schumacher’s Haas car broke in two in an accident in front of the swimming pool complex. Two laps later there was another red flag because work had to be done on the track boundary. Schumacher himself was uninjured – as in Saudi Arabia, expensive damage was caused to his car.
After the second restart, it was just under 40 minutes before the race would have exceeded the maximum duration of three hours. Perez, who was carrying a bald spot on a front tire due to a braking error, had to fight hard to keep Sainz behind. In the end, both of his front tires lost a lot, but he still retained a lead of 1.154 seconds. “Today is a dream come true for me. I’ve been dreaming of a triumph in Monaco for years,” said Perez. Verstappen, on the other hand, increased his lead over the frustrated Leclerc to nine points in the overall World Cup standings.
Source: Nachrichten
