`Checo´Perez won his first race on this 2022 season at the Monaco GP. The Mexican driver added on Sunday his third victory as a Formula 1 driver. His teammate Verstappen made a third place. On the other hand, Ferrari had a bad weekend. Thanks to a bad pit stop of Ferrari workers, Leclerc lost his first position. The weather was a relevant fact on the course of the race.
The start of the race was delayed thanks to the intense rain for some minutes. After that, teams would change the tyres and the 20 cars started the race with extreme rain tires until the circuit dried. They also did not start from the starting line. The safety car was with them during some laps and after checking the track condition the race would start.
After an hour of delay, Charles Leclerc had the first place advantage. His teammate Carlos Sainz was behind and Redbull guys (Max and Checo) were behind them.
When it stopped raining, some teams decided to put medium tires. Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri) was one of the first to try this tyre. He made the fastest lap at the beginning and advanced several positions. On the lap 17, `Checo´ went to the pits and entered as fifth classified. Leclerc and Verstappen entered on lap 19. Carlos would had another strategy. The Spanish driver knew how to take advantage with extreme rain tires and changed directly to “slick” one directly. Latifi (Williams) blocked Carlos on the pit exit and it cost him the leadership.
Meanwhile, Hamilton (Mercedes) and Esteban Ocon (Alpine) had a little touch on the lap 18 when they were fighting for the eighth position. Hamilton suffered some damages on the spoiler part and Ocon received a 5 seconds sanction.
The big accident of the day was produced by Mick Schumacher. The Haas driver crashed his car at the pool chicane. This caused a red flag with the car split in two. The race resumed on the lap 33 and continued like this until the end : Perez, Sainz, Max, Leclerc, Russell and Lando.
From this point the race divided in two parts. The group from Lando to Perez and another one from Fernando Alonso until the last one. The Spanish driver knew that is too difficult overtake at Monaco and he controlled Hamilton (behind him all the GP) all the race.
Perez suffered a heavy tire degradation. The guys of Redbull Racing and Ferrari were really near all of them but there was no change of positions.
Jorge Barbero
