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Sergio Pérez keeps his cool in masterful Monaco Grand Prix triumph
The Mexican wins his second race for Oracle Red Bull Racing at the most famous Grand Prix of all, with team-mate Max Verstappen joining him on the podium.
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The Monaco Grand Prix is one of the most predictable races of any Formula One season; a high-speed single-file parade around a track steeped in prestige and history. A race where passing is close to impossible and action is usually constrained to whatever happens on the run to the first corner on the opening lap.
Unless it rains, of course… and then all bets in this most glamorous of gamblers' paradises are off.
In a race that ended over three hours after it began on Sunday, one that featured a deluge that flooded parts of the track, a red flag to fix a demolished barrier and didn't even run to its full distance, the 2022 Monaco Grand Prix was all about who could keep their head and perform under duress. It was a task Oracle Red Bull Racing's Sergio Pérez was more than qualified for.
The Mexican, third on the grid after a hefty crash in qualifying on Saturday, promised he'd atone for a long night for his mechanics repairing his battered RB18 machine. After 64 laps of mostly breathless action, Pérez won his third F1 race to become Mexico's most successful driver, delivering a crushing blow to Ferrari after Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz locked out the front row of the grid 24 hours earlier at a track where qualifying usually determines the race result.
It was all smiles (for the Red Bull trio) on the unique Monaco podium
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
The race essentially boiled down to a final 40-minute blast after a delay to fix a trackside barrier following a heavy crash for Haas driver Mick Schumacher on Lap 28, with Red Bull and Ferrari taking opposite approaches to achieve the same end.
Pérez and team-mate Max Verstappen emerged for the restart on medium-compound tyres – faster, but less durable – while Ferrari pair Sainz and Leclerc elected to run to the end on hard tyres. These would take longer to get into their ideal operating window, but would be faster as the laps counted down.
There were times in the final 36 laps that it looked to be a matter of when, not if, Sainz would pounce on Pérez, but the Mexican was ice-cold when the pressure was at its hottest. There was literally nothing in it at the end – the winning margin was 1.154 seconds – but it was enough for Pérez to take his second victory for the team after annexing last year's Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Sainz was second, while Verstappen – not on Pérez's pace all weekend – extended his championship lead over home hero Leclerc to nine points with third after the Monegasque driver couldn’t convert from a superb pole position lap on Saturday.
Here's how a madcap afternoon played out on the Monaco city streets.
Checo chuffed with 'dream' becoming reality
Verstappen won last year's Monaco Grand Prix with as little fuss as possible, leading all the way in a race that featured no safety car interventions and barely a barrier brushed by the entire field. Pérez, on the other hand, had countless obstacles to overcome in Sunday's race where seemingly anything was in play.
Torrential rain just as the race was about to get underway delayed the start by over an hour, and the field circulated slowly behind the safety car on extreme wet tyres in the early going. When the rain abated, Leclerc bolted from the pack with his uncompromised visibility from pole as the race got going in earnest.
With the track drying, the race became one of being on the right tyre – wet, intermediate or dry slicks – at the right time, and the Oracle Red Bull Racing pit wall made all the right calls. Pérez initially pitted to discard his wets for intermediates on Lap 16, and then the key moment came on Lap 22 when both Red Bull drivers pitted again for slicks, two rapid stops coming as Leclerc had a compromised stop of his own.
When the race shook out, Pérez had vaulted to the lead with Verstappen in third, and Red Bull suddenly held the strategic high ground.
Fast-forward three hours and two minutes from the race's scheduled 2pm start time, and Pérez was in awe of what he'd achieved.
The moment: Pérez wins the most famous F1 race of all
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
"It's a dream come true," he beamed.
"As a driver you dream of winning here, after your home race I think there is no other more special weekend to win. To do it and the way we did it… we made it a bit harder for ourselves at the end. With the graining I had (on the tyres) I could not make any mistake and bring it home. Keeping Carlos behind wasn't easy.
"It's a massive day for myself and for my country."
Oracle Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner felt his team's second win in a week was as much down to smarts as it was speed, which Verstappen used to saunter to victory in Spain seven days earlier.
"Strategically I don’t think we had the quickest car today," Horner admitted.
"But we got it right, the double pit stop, and it was all about teamwork. It's a phenomenal team result."
Pérez consolidated his third place in the drivers' standings, his fourth podium in seven races this season seeing his tally grow to 110 points, just six behind second-placed Leclerc. Twelve years into his F1 career, he's in the form of his life.
Max lauds teamwork after Monte Carlo gains
Verstappen has rarely had to play second-fiddle to his team-mates – or any other drivers, to be fair – across his F1 career. However, he was behind Pérez in all three practice sessions and qualifying in Monaco, somewhat frustrated after Pérez's crash late in Q3 prevented him from potentially advancing from fourth on the grid.
The odds were against Verstappen given nobody had won a Monaco Grand Prix from outside the top three on the grid in the dry since Alain Prost in 1985. Yet, in the chaotic conditions where so much could have gone wrong on Sunday, third place – and extension of his championship lead after main rival Leclerc had qualified on pole – was a result worth far more than 15 world championship points.
The reigning world champion's second straight Monaco podium did snap a run of four wins from as many finishes in 2022, and denied him a chance to win four Grands Prix in a row for the first time in his career. But as always with Verstappen, there was a bigger picture in mind.
Verstappen increased his championship lead with a polished performance
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
"I tried the best I could, and with the team we did a really good job with the strategy to basically get ahead of the Ferraris," he said.
"As a whole team we can be very pleased with the Sunday – it was a very hectic one with the rain and stuff, but I think we executed it well. I extended my points lead which I didn't expect last night, so I think that's a positive.
"When you haven't really driven around here in the wet and the tyres are very slippery, it's all about trying to be very focused. It's easy to make a mistake. Luckily nothing really crazy happened. Overall, quite a decent day."
A 40-point haul between Pérez and Verstappen saw Red Bull extend its lead over Ferrari to 36 points in the constructors' standings with one-third of the season in the books.
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Gasly's cruel luck punctures progress
There's often a thin line between success and misery in Monaco, and Scuderia AlphaTauri's Pierre Gasly found that out first-hand on Saturday when the Frenchman was desperately unlucky to qualify just 17th, bad luck seeing his weekend unravel in an instant.
Gasly, who finished comfortably inside the top 10 in all three practice sessions, was the innocent victim of a red flag caused by team-mate Yuki Tsunoda in Q1, the Japanese driver clipping the inside wall at the Nouvelle Chicane and scattering debris onto the circuit. When action resumed, Gasly just failed – by a second – to begin his final hot lap in time, and tumbled all the way down the order to 17th place.
Tsunoda pushed the limits, but didn't make the points
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Gasly was one of the first drivers to brave using intermediate tyres on a sodden track on Sunday to try to vault up the order, but finished a frustrated 11th and one place out of the points to extend his recent barren run.
Tsunoda, meanwhile, battled late in the race to get his car stopped into the intimidating Sainte Devote corner at Turn 1 on worn tyres, and a couple of off-track excursions saw him in 17th place at the chequered flag.
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Schumacher's lucky escape
Given the weather and the close proximity of the trackside barriers at Monaco, it was testament to the skill of the modern-day F1 driver that there were just three retirements in a race that featured trapdoors at every turn.
Schumacher's crash that caused the red flag stoppage prompted a heart-in-mouth moment when his Haas came to a halt on Lap 28. The German clouting the wall in the middle of the super-fast Swimming Pool section of the track, spinning into a nearby barrier, and the car splitting in half before coming to a halt, the gearbox parting ways from the rest of the machine.
Fortunately Schumacher was more surprised by the accident than injured from it on what was a costly day for Haas, team-mate Kevin Magnussen another driver to retire before half-distance.
A high-speed city rush hour
After the majesty and history of Monaco, F1 tackles its fifth street circuit in the first eight races of the 2022 season in a fortnight's time – but the city thoroughfares of Baku for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix (June 12) could barely be more different than the sinewy, slow-speed paths of The Principality.
Baku most resembles the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Saudi Arabia for pure velocity, but unlike Jeddah and its sweeping corners between concrete blocks, Azerbaijan offers flat-out blasts that wouldn't be out of place at tracks like Monza and Mexico. The 2.2km straight from Turn 16 to Turn 1 seeing cars reach eye-watering speeds of more than 350kph beside the Caspian Sea.
Extreme slipstreaming and audacious passing attempts into the first corner are guaranteed, while many drivers have danced too close to the old medieval city walls at Turn 8 over the five years the circuit has been on the schedule.
Red Bull success has bookended the short history of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Daniel Ricciardo winning the first instalment in 2017 before Pérez snared last year's race, Verstappen on track for victory before a cruel late-race puncture saw him become an innocent bystander.
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