Perez wins wet & wild Monaco GP; Sainz P2, Verstappen P3; Leclerc a disconsolate fourth place after Ferrari fumble strategy

The Mediterranean weather gods conspired to make the 2022 Monaco Grand Prix one of the most unpredictable and exciting in many a year. After nothing but blue skies and sunshine for every practice session and Saturday qualifying, the drivers and teams arrived on the grid in the midst of downpour on Sunday afternoon in the principality. The start was delayed for over an hour until the rain had subsided enough to insure a safer race. Then the entire field was obliged to start on full wet weather Pirelli tires, the cars lining up behind the Safety Car for several reconnaissance laps to aid the drying of this tight and tricky street circuit until the race finally got underway on what was officially Lap 3. The pole-sitting Ferrari of hometown hero Charles Leclerc led away cleanly, trailed by his teammate Carlos Sainz in P2 and the two Red Bulls of Sergio Perez in P3 and points leader Max Verstappen in P4. By Lap 2, AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly felt adventurous enough to come into the pits and change to the less heavily treaded Intermediate wet tires and the Frenchman soon began setting fast laps, setting off a strategic scramble for everyone else to find the opportune time to make that change themselves.

For the leaders, this was the trickiest of calls because, not only is track position absolutely king on the streets of Monte Carlo, but the drying track would soon be ready for slicks if the weather continued to hold off, as was now predicted. By virtue of his eventful qualifying where he actually benefitted from binning his car at the end of Q3, thereby preventing his teammate from improving his time, thereby being in front of Verstappen, Perez was the first of the Red Bulls to pit. He came in on Lap 16 for the Intermediates, which were so well suited to the current track conditions that the veteran Mexican was able to set a blistering out lap and thereby heap pressure on the two leading Ferraris still trundling around on rapidly deteriorating full Wet tires. Ferrari responded by calling in Leclerc on Lap 18, with Verstappen right behind him for the same Wets-to-Inters switch. But Perez had used those two laps to good advantage and undercut Leclerc to take P2 away from him. Meanwhile, Sainz kept pounding around from point in his Prancing Horse until Lap 21, when the Ferrari team & driver now adjudged the circuit ready for slick dry weather tires. They put the Hard compound on Sainz’s car, theoretically enabling the Spaniard to save a stop by skipping the Inters entirely… so long as the track continued drying out.

Lap 21 was also the pivotal moment where Ferrari would fumble their second call to Leclerc, costing him the potential win that he has dreamt of since he was a boy on these very streets. The Scuderia pit wall initially told the Monegasque to follow Sainz in but then urgently countermanded that order and told him to stay out. But it was too late for Leclerc to stay out because he had already committed to the pit entry. The furious Leclerc got his own set of Hard Pirellis but now the power of the overcut soon became apparent when first Perez and then Verstappen came in a lap later and both put on Softs. The two Red Bulls then set blistering out laps that enabled Perez to keep head of Sainz, who was impeded by the lapped Williams of Nicholas Latifi on his out lap, with Verstappen slotting in at P3 and a disconsolate Leclerc now relegated to P4 after the pit confusion and a poor out lap. After a huge shunt by Haas’s Mick Schumacher in which the driver was thankfully uninjured but his car was completely torn apart, a Red Flag was thrown after a few laps of Safety Car proved insufficient to clean up the debris field and repair the barriers.

But that Red Flag also neutralized any further strategy calls Ferrari might have made to somehow get their men further back to the front, as all the teams got a free change of tires in the pits and the race was soon to be declared a timed event with just over a half hour to run due to all the delays. The front four pushed each other hard and Red Bull looked like they may have gotten cocky by closing to put their men on Mediums while Ferrari opted for the longer running hards for their two drivers. But Perez was able to keep his tires under him and control the race from the front and, with passing nearly impossible here, he kept Sainz at bay and came home for a glorious victory, becoming the first Mexican to win the prestigious Monaco Grand Prix. Sainz salvaged P2 for the Scuderia but Verstappen fought off Leclerc’s desperate efforts to at least score a podium, so Max finished P3, while the disconsolate Leclerc had to settle for the bitter pill of P4 on a day where he had hoped for so much more.

Top 10 finishers of the Monaco GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race is in a fortnight’s time — the always entertaining Azerbaijan Grand Prix from the Baku City Circuit, a completely different kind of street circuit nearly double the length of Monaco, considerably faster down the straights and where overtaking is much more prevalent. Ferrari and Leclerc will be looking to rebound from several recent unforced errors and get his championship hunt back on track, while Verstappen will be seeking to reassert his dominance after a weekend when he was outshone by his teammate Perez. Hope to see you then to find out how it all shakes out!