Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen survives a mid-race rain shower to take victory at the most famous street race on the Formula 1 calendar, the Monaco Grand Prix.
The double world champion converted pole position successfully despite having to contend with the wet weather among the final third of the race, extending his stint on the medium tyres to cover off the looming threat of rain.
With a dry start to proceedings, the medium-shod Verstappen covered off any threat of a pass from Fernando Alonso on the hards at the start, and immediately began to cement his lead early on with a strong opening salvo of laps to build a buffer.
Alonso was unable to match his fellow two-time champion’s laptimes in the first phase of the race, as worries over a puncture suggested that the Aston Martin was not handling correctly – although his team informed him that all was well when checking tyre pressures.
The lead reached 11.8 seconds by lap 25, although this had shrunk slightly by the 30th lap, with the gap 10.6 seconds over Alonso. At this moment had begun to close in on traffic as he was angling to lap the backmarkers – including teammate Sergio Perez.
This allowed Alonso to cut into Verstappen’s gap in an attempt to barge his way through the rearguard action, despite Perez doing his best to make his fellow Red Bull driver’s life easier.
The gap shrunk to 5.6 seconds, but then began to grow once more as Alonso was now firmly ensconced in the tailback as Verstappen had largely cleared it.
Radio reports over the severity of rain began to intensify, and Red Bull elected to hold off pitting Verstappen to ensure he was well placed to take advantage of a well-timed pitstop.
As light showers grew into heavier rainfall, particularly in the middle sector, which prompted a number of backmarkers to bolt on the intermediate compound.
Alonso then pitted on the lap 54, but Aston Martin made a decision to use mediums onto the Aston Martin just as the rain continued to fall.
This prompted him to pit again on the following lap, along with Verstappen, to collect the intermediates – but the gap was well over 20 seconds at this point.
Despite Alonso’s best efforts to close the gap over the remaining 20 laps, getting it down to 17.8 seconds at one point as Verstappen could not switch on his intermediate Pirellis as swiftly, the Red Bull driver grew in strength and continued to build his advantage.
Alonso’s arrears continued to increase and he eventually had to concede, finishing almost 28 seconds behind at the chequered flag.
Esteban Ocon converted his third position start into a third Formula 1 podium, despite coming under heavy pressure from Carlos Sainz in the early stages.
Sainz and Ferrari had been attempting to goad Alpine into pitting Ocon early to gain track position, but the team did not bite. On the lap 52, Sainz had his best shot at passing Ocon as the rain had emerged, but went off at the Nouvelle Chicane and had to give way.
Ocon then came under attack from Lewis Hamilton during the rain-hit phase of the race as the Mercedes duo had undercut the Ferraris, but the Alpine driver held firm to keep hold of a podium place.
Hamilton finished fourth ahead of team-mate George Russell, who copped a five-second penalty for rejoining the circuit unsafely at Mirabeau; having slid off, he reversed and went into the path of a hapless Sergio Perez, who made contact with the Mercedes.
Nonetheless, Russell’s advantage over Charles Leclerc ensured he kept fifth, as the home hero overtook team-mate Sainz as they were scrabbling around on medium tyres prior to their pitstop – and a double-stack to swiftly bring the SF-23s onto intermediates hurt Sainz further.
This put the Ferrari driver behind Pierre Gasly, whom he could not pass despite lingering behind his gearbox.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri completed the points, the McLaren duo making carbon-copy Turn 1 passes on Yuki Tsunoda on consecutive laps as the AlphaTauri driver struggled with his brakes.
Verstappen opened his championship lead to 39 points over Perez following a miserable race, where he pitted five times having started last, and ultimately finished P16. Not a good day for last year’s winner.
So congratulation to Max Verstappen in winning and becoming the most successful Red Bull driver with 39 race victories, one more than Sebastian Vettel. An impressive achievement in Formula 1.
Monaco Grand Prix, race results:
1 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:48:51.980
2 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin +27.921s
3 Esteban Ocon Alpine +36.990s
4 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes +39.062s
5 George Russell Mercedes +56.284s
6 Charles Leclerc Ferrari +61.890s
7 Pierre Gasly Alpine +62.362s
8 Carlos Sainz Ferrari +63.391s
9 Lando Norris McLaren +1 lap
10 Oscar Piastri McLaren +1 lap
11 Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo +1 lap
12 Nyck de Vries AlphaTauri +1 lap
13 Zhou Guanyu Alfa Romeo +1 lap
14 Alex Albon Williams +1 lap
15 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri +2 laps
16 Sergio Perez Red Bull +2 laps
17 Nico Hulkenberg Haas +2 laps
18 Logan Sargeant Williams +2 laps
Kevin Magnussen Haas DNF
Lance Stroll Aston Martin DNF
Monaco Grand Prix race review as reported by Formula1.com.
Max Verstappen kept Red Bull’s 2023 winning record intact by overcoming a rain shower – and the chaos that ensued – in the closing stages of the Monaco Grand Prix, leading home Aston Martin rival Fernando Alonso and the Alpine of Esteban Ocon.
Verstappen made a clean getaway when the race began to maintain his pole position advantage over Alonso into the first corner, with the Red Bull opting for medium starting tyres and the Aston Martin going for hards.
But as the race developed and their one-and-only stops approached, a rain shower hit the track to turn the encounter on its head, causing a flurry of off-track excursions, brushes with the barriers and pit lane activity.
Alonso pitted while only a portion of the track was damp and initially took on mediums, but intensifying rainfall meant he was forced back in for intermediates, which the rest of the field soon clambered for as well.
Crucially, Verstappen went straight from his starting mediums to intermediates, surviving contact with the wall before pitting, getting back into a rhythm in the mixed conditions and controlling proceedings to the chequered flag.
Despite his extra stop, Alonso had enough in hand to retain second and score Aston Martin’s best result of the season so far, with Ocon taking advantage of the changing weather and subsequent pit lane rush for the final spot on the podium.
Mercedes’ updated W14s racked up a solid haul of points as Lewis Hamilton and George Russell took fourth and fifth respectively, the latter’s five-second time penalty for clashing with Sergio Perez when he rejoined track from an off-track excursion in the slippery conditions not affecting his finishing position.
Home favourite Charles Leclerc crossed the line where he started in sixth, having been given a three-place grid penalty for impeding Lando Norris in qualifying, followed by the other Alpine of Pierre Gasly and Ferrari team mate Carlos Sainz.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri gave McLaren a double points finish in ninth and 10th, completing late moves on AlphaTauri rival Yuki Tsunoda, who then tumbled down the order to 15th amid a lock-up and brake complaints.
Alfa Romeo wound up 11th and 13th, with Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu sandwiching the other AlphaTauri of Nyck de Vries, followed by Williams’ Alex Albon, the aforementioned Tsunoda and Sergio Perez, who could do no more than 16th after his qualifying crash.
Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg endured a messy race en route to 17th, having been given a five-second penalty by the stewards – for hitting Logan Sargeant on Lap 1 – that was not served correctly, resulting in an additional, 10-second sanction.
Sargeant was the final finisher, with Kevin Magnussen retiring his Haas in the closing laps after braving the wet conditions and being the last driver to ditch slick tyres, and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll the other to DNF after an array of incidents.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.verstappen-beats-alonso-to-monaco-gp-victory-despite-rain-causing-late-drama.uszYLTBk2UIa3GIpag9Fa.html
Max Verstappen says hitting the wall at Portier in Formula 1’s rain-affected Monaco Grand Prix helped him stop sliding out of the lead on his way to victory.
Verstappen, who had comfortably led from pole all race, kept his head cool on worn medium tyres when a brief but intense rain shower spiced up the second half of what was shaping up to remain a lifeless Monaco race.
Having held off on making a pitstop to get rid of his old tyres because he didn’t want to give up track position to the chasing Fernando Alonso on hards, Verstappen was rewarded for his patience by being able to switch straight to intermediates when the rain intensified on lap 56 of 78.
Verstappen’s cause was further helped by Alonso pitting for slicks, the Spaniard taking a massive gamble to try and win the race instead of settling for yet another podium.
But Verstappen almost threw away the win by losing control of his Red Bull RB19 into the first right-hander of Portier, tapping the outside wall before gingerly heading into the tunnel.
According to Verstappen his wall tap actually helped arrest his slide as he fought to remain in control. “I locked the rears and I couldn’t get out of it, so it’s just trying to control it with a bit of drifting,” Verstappen said.
“Luckily the wall in a way stopped it from sliding even more.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/verstappen-hitting-the-wall-helped-me-during-portier-scare-in-monaco-f1/10474859/
Aston Martin Formula 1 team principal Mike Krack says that Fernando Alonso wouldn’t have won the Monaco GP had he gone straight to intermediate tyres when rain first appeared.
Alonso switched from his old hard tyres to mediums as the first signs of a shower hit some areas of the track.
After it intensified and spread over the whole circuit, he quickly came in again for intermediates.
Alonso held onto his second place, but Krack insists that had the Spaniard made a single stop instead of two he still wouldn’t have beaten race winner Max Verstappen.
He stressed that the Silverstone outfit made the right call with the available information at the time.
“We need to look at the whole thing, how it went,” said Krack. “Obviously, you try to stay out as long as you can in such conditions when you do not really know what’s going to happen.
“We did not anticipate so much rain, to be honest. So we thought that it would just be a short shower, and drying quickly because the track was very hot. Then normally, you would say, okay, we stay out one more, two or three more laps, but the tyres were worn already quite a lot.
“And we saw the temperatures going down. So that was a bit of a risk. When the car came in then with this information, we said, okay, let’s fit the mediums. But then when the car left, shortly after we saw that it was really a lot of rain. And we had to come back.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/aston-martin-alonso-wouldnt-have-won-monaco-f1-going-straight-to-inters/10475095/
Fred Vasseur has defended his Ferrari Formula 1 team’s ‘good strategy calls’ in Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix in the wake of Carlos Sainz’s frustration.
Sainz was incensed when Ferrari called him into the pits on lap 33, one lap after the Alpine of Esteban Ocon that Sainz was shadowing during the entire first stint.
Despite a slow stop from Alpine, Sainz didn’t manage to overcut the Frenchman and he felt Ferrari should have been more patient as he had more pace in hand on his tyres, which he had been able to save while being stuck behind the Frenchman.
“What the f***! This is exactly what I talked about,” he raged on the radio, and when told the aim of the pitstop was to cover off Lewis Hamilton behind, he replied: “I don’t care about Hamilton. This is weak.”
Sainz later showed remorse for his outburst, saying he “shouldn’t have showed it on the radio.
“Obviously, I was very quick on the in-lap and felt like I still had a lot more lap time to come in clean air.
“I had been doing all that management. To suddenly pit, it left me frustrated.”
Team boss Vasseur defended the timing of the pitstop, because the team felt the threat from Hamilton’s Mercedes was simply too big to leave the Spaniard out.
“I think it was a good strategy because when we asked him to pit it was to avoid losing a position against Hamilton,” said Vasseur.
“Positions are key on this track. It would have been better to extend if we were not at risk from Hamilton, but in this situation I think it was the good call.”
Sainz had been visibly frustrated at being stuck behind Ocon, making ambitious overtaking attempts at the chicane which left him with front wing damage, and which Vasseur labelled as “a bit optimistic and on the edge.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/vasseur-defends-ferrari-f1s-monaco-strategy-amid-sainz-frustration/10475083/