Red Bull’s Sergio Perez takes the chequered flag ahead of Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen in Monaco
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Red Bull’s Sergio Perez takes the chequered flag ahead of Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen in Monaco… with devastated Charles Leclerc coming in fourth after failing to build on pole
Sergio Perez won an incident-packed, wet-dry Monaco Grand PrixMexican rose from third to the lead during a part of the race in wet conditions The start of the race was delayed for an hour after a downpour of rainMax Verstappen extended his championship lead to nine points
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Sergio Perez won a stop-start, rain-hit, crash-punctuated Monaco Grand Prix on a day Ferrari and Charles Leclerc would rather forget.
Leclerc started on pole but Ferrari first messed up their strategy – not matching Red Bull when they brought in Perez to move from wet tyres to intermediates – and then botched his second stop, when he switched to slicks, to send him tumbling from first to fourth on his home track.
There was also a shocking-looking crash involving Mick Schumacher. He caught a damp patch as he hurtled through the swimming pool complex and kissed the barrier on the right and was sent into a 360-degree spin. He banged into the barrier on the other side and his Haas split in half. It looked awful, but the 23-year-old German radioed in to say he was fine and walked away.
The race was red-flagged for 20 minutes as a result.
It was one of several delays – the first of them amounting to 70 minutes at the start. Rain fell and the race director Eduardo Freitas, taking charge for only the second time, was slow getting them going even as the conditions improved and the track began to dry. He finally started them under a safety car – pretty cautious.
He later resumed the race after the Schumacher incident with a rolling start – very cautious.
There were 40 minutes left following the red-flag delay. By then the track was almost entirely dry.
Perez held on despite a late Carlos Sainz charge to claim his first win at Monaco and third in all. Sainz was runner-up for Ferrari, defending champion and championship leader Max Verstappen third, and Leclerc fourth.
Just two seconds separated the top four as they chequered flag was waved.
Leclerc’s fate was sealed when his second stop saw him told to come in and then to stay in. Too late! He was already in by then and had to wait a moment for Sainz to clear the box, losing valuable time.
He let out an unintelligible message of anger over the radio.
Lewis Hamilton started and finished eighth, 50 seconds off the winner, after for a while duelling with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon. The Frenchman was handed a five-second penalty for causing a crash as the two of them went wheel-to-wheel.
George Russell finished three places ahead of Hamilton, having started two places above him and made one stop fewer than his Mercedes team-mate.
Lando Norris was sixth for McLaren when the three-hour limit was up after 64 of the intended 77 laps completed.
Scroll down to see how it all unfolded…
