Red Bull’s Sergio Perez won the third victory of his career in the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Monaco, after the good work of Charles Leclerc was canceled by his Ferrari team.
Here are our conclusions from Monte Carlo …
Sergio Perez: not bad for pilot number two
Perez did not doubt his status in Red Bull after the Spanish Grand Prix, where he was instructed to move to his teammate Max Verstappen.
In the midst of the moment, and without the full facts of the cockpit situation, Perez described the use of Red Bull command orders as “unfair” on the team’s radio.
The team’s preferences really shouldn’t have come as news – Verstappen is and always will be the point around the world of Red Bull – but awareness had the potential to break his spirit.
Instead, he responded by presenting the best performance of his career at Red Bull in Monaco.
Perez was indeed the fastest Red Bull driver in the principality, where he overtook Verstappen in every session except Q1 and was better prepared to deal with the slow rotation of the RB18.
His courage to be the first leader to switch to intermediate tires was rewarded with a lead when he overtook both Ferraris.
And while the huge media blockade at Mirabeau shortly after the restart led to an awkward series of laps while the clock ticked, Perez had a position on the track and put his car in all the right places, withstanding the pressure to take the victory.
“Winning Monaco is a dream come true as a pilot; “When you get into Formula One and when you come to Monaco and you drive for the first time, you always dream of one day winning a race or racing here,” he said.
“So it’s just amazing, such a great day for myself.”
“Throw the video at the pool.” 😍💦 #MonacoGP 🇲🇨 pic.twitter.com/uZViZIZEDr
– Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) May 29, 2022
No pilot in the current grid is competing with a greater sense of national identity than Perez, whose tears on the podium as the Mexican national anthem sounds will be one of the highlights of the season.
One weekend he competed in helmet design, paying tribute to Pedro Rodriguez, his third victory of his career means he now stands alone as the most successful Mexican driver in F1 history.
And captivatingly, he, too, is now only 15 points behind Verstappen in the drivers’ championship, he couldn’t, could he?
Ferrari’s incompetence ensures that Leclerc’s curse in Monaco continues
Well, at least Leclerc already has a Monaco Grand Prix finish to his name, but he didn’t need to say that it could – should – be much more.
He may never have a better chance of winning his home race, especially if the principality loses its place on the calendar in the near future, and for most of this weekend Leclerc seemed destined to rise to victory with one of the great performances of Monaco.
In recent years, the No. 16 Ferrari has often looked like a ticking time bomb in qualifying, set to explode at the culmination of Q3 in a magnificent explosive blur of speed and controlled aggression, but here Leclerc dared to go into nuclear power.
His breathtaking last performance of Q3 was four-tenths more than his previous lap at the time the red flag ended the session prematurely, brutally transferring what would be a last success, just to another contender for the Greatest Tour, which never has been.
After all, Leclerc – his first experience, which was good enough – had a pylon, and in Monaco this would be almost a done deal for most of the years.
But this is Charles Leclerc. In Monaco.
Leclerc did what he had to do in his early laps, negotiating grim conditions to build a comfortable lead over team-mate Carlos Sainz, but one day strong decisions were needed, and part of his garage was captured in strategic No Man’s Land.
Ferrari were probably too slow to call Leclerc for the shift from extreme wet to intermediate, and when he returned to the pits just three laps later for pictures, he had to line up behind Sainz.
The victory was then gone.
The turning point of the race… # MonacoGP # F1 pic.twitter.com/ZJQv8SzWlg
– Formula 1 (@ F1) May 29, 2022
After overcoming a 46-point lead over Verstappen after three rounds, it was widely considered a race to win for Leclerc’s chances for the title, with upcoming events in Baku and Montreal to favor Red Bull’s superb speed at the end of rights.
The parallels with the 2016 defeat of Daniel Ricciardo, another driver who was the class on the field in Monaco, while his team’s mistake cost him the victory, are obvious.
Yet Leclerc – who does not hesitate to describe Ferrari’s behavior in the race as a “mess” – must resist the temptation to keep him against them, unlike Ricciardo, who never allowed Red Bull to forget the day he was let down.
Now more than ever, Ferrari and Leclerc have to stick together.
Sainz’s intelligence and strength of character shine
The first months of this season proved without a doubt that in terms of speed and ability, Leclerc is simply at a different level than Sainz.
While Leclerc won twice to create the title challenge platform, Sainz – with a sharp driving style defined by harsh interventions – sometimes struggled to keep his car on the track, crashing inelegantly in Australia, Imola and Miami.
He may lack the stellar qualities and natural finesse of his teammate, but the intelligence and strength of Sainz’s character made him avoid the same fate as Leclerc in Monte Carlo.
Monaco’s last GP hit by rain was in 2016, with the constant image of the race being Ricciardo sitting helplessly in his pits as his Red Bull mechanics climbed around his car in search of tires.
This miscommunication cost Ricciardo the victory of Lewis Hamilton, but an often overlooked element of Hamilton’s victory was his transition directly from extremely wet to dry tires, which saved him time from a temporary stop for intermediate stops.
The optimal strategy for drying the track in Monaco was thrown to stone that day and the memories of this race were almost certainly in the minds of Sainz, when the temptation to try intermediate level grows, he made Ferrari realize its intentions in the 15th lap.
“We will go straight to drying,” he announced on team radio.
In an almost typical way, Ferrari seemed to ignore him, as he was instructed to take intermediate laps two laps later, but Sainz was adamant in his determination to stay away and persuade the team to trust him.
In the end, his only stop did not matter his position – he started and would finish P2 – but Sainz was convinced he would have celebrated his first victory at the Monaco Grand Prix had it not been for the intervention of Nicholas Latifi, who toured Williams. in his tour. .
“We were patient on the wet surface, we made the right decision to go for pictures and a car with a lap, a horrible lap stuck behind a lap, cost me the victory today.” #MonacoGP # F1
– PlanetF1 (@ Planet_F1) May 29, 2022
Leclerc showed Sainz the way home for most of 2022, but when it comes to reading a race, conditions and questioning his own team’s decisions, maybe Carlos can still teach Charles a trick or two .
Hit the road for Mercedes as Russell holds the top five record
After finally breaking the W13 code in Barcelona, where the team thought Hamilton would have fought for victory if it had not been for the clash on the first lap, Mercedes seems to have taken a step back in Monaco.
However, it soon turned out that they did not suffer from aerodynamic marine pollution in the principality, but from a different kind of jumping associated with the height of the ride and the rigidity of the suspension.
After mixing with Red Bulls and Ferrari in Spain, Mercedes was re-qualified by McLaren to Lando Norris in Monte Carlo, although George Russell mimicked Sainz’s strategy from wet to slippery to beat Norris and continue his series of top finishes. five of each competition in 2022.
George Russell overcomes Lando Norris as McLaren driver leaves boxing
This move led Russell to P5, which eventually led him to continue his series of finishes in the top five 👏 #MonacoGP # F1 pic.twitter.com/aqHuJH9409
– Formula 1 (@ F1) May 29, 2022
Hamilton, meanwhile, seems to be struggling a bit more with Mercedes’ restrictions and is stuck behind Fernando Alonso, who had previously struggled to find his way past Esteban Ocon’s other alpine bike.
A place with such unique requirements, Monaco came at a bad time in the recovery of Mercedes from their bad start to the season and will probably come a more accurate presentation of their progress when F1 returns to the more extended and conventional tracks.
This, physically and metaphorically, was a bump in the road.
The Schumacher incidents are a test of Haas’ patience
Gunther Steiner has been accustomed to seeing his cars on the wall over the years. After all, this is the man who hired Romain Grosjean and Nikita Mazepin.
Accidents are just part of the game, but what Steiner will not tolerate – especially in this era of budget constraints and the reluctance of team owner Jean Haas to put his hand in his pocket at the best of times – is a car that is “broken” into pieces regularly.
Mick Schumacher’s long quest for the first final points in Formula 1 continued in Monaco, where he lost control and crashed in the swimming pool section on lap 27, tearing the rear of the car from the main chassis.
Schumacher: “I’m fine, I just don’t understand it”
Thank God it’s good! The gearbox detached from the car. # F1 # Formula1 #MonacoGP pic.twitter.com/3fwgdIQYJR
– F1 Magazine (@ thef1magazine) May 29, 2022
It was Schumacher’s second major accident of the season since his qualifying crash in Saudi Arabia.
IN…
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