Red Bull pounced on Ferrari’s mistakes last Sunday in Monaco to deny the polesitter at his home race with a bit of help from the weather.
Delayed Start
When the grid formed in Monaco for the initial start, there was moderate rain, so the race directors opted for a rolling start instead of a standing one. This is due to the potential risks of a wet standing start on the narrow street circuit. Teams had to decide between intermediate tires and full wets. The drivers completed two formation laps behind the safety car, but the rain intensified, and the red flags were waved.
The race was scheduled to start at 4:00 pm in Monte-Carlo, but due to heavy incoming rain clouds, the race directors aired on the side of caution. They watched the forecast closely, and the race started just after 5:00 pm. Under red flag conditions, the drivers were out of their cars in the pitlane, anxiously anticipating the real first laps on the momentarily flooded street circuit.
When the race resumed behind the safety car, Nicholas Latifi understeered into the barriers at the Loews hairpin; he needed a new front wing. Lance Stroll also brushed the barriers at Massenet, which caused a right rear puncture.
LAP 1/77
— Formula 1 (@F1) May 29, 2022
The race has started behind the Safety Car
Latifi has gone into the barriers at the hairpin. He’s managed to get going again#MonacoGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/4GuZku8ucq
The worst of the rain would ease at around Lap 12, and the teams had to develop a strategy to work on the drying track.
Who Blinked First?
The field was on full wet tires until Lap 12 when Alpha Tauri’s Pierre Gasly decided to take the gamble. The Frenchman passed Zhou Guanyu up the inside at Mirabeau. Then he put a rare move on Daniel Ricciardo at the exit of Tabac as the McLaren struggled for grip on full wets. Gasly collected data for the rest of the teams, who decided to switch to intermediates after seeing their advantage.
Mercedes pitted Lewis Hamilton for intermediates while his teammate George Russell stayed out on full wets. Then McLaren pitted Lando Norris so that he could be on a similar race strategy to Hamilton. Crucially, Perez came in for intermediates, which forced Ferrari to pit Leclerc from the lead to cover him off. Meanwhile, Sainz told his team that he wanted to skip the intermediate tire and go straight for slicks. He stayed out and got track position.
Double Stack
After Leclerc’s first stop, Red Bull had successfully undercut Ferrari, but the real strategic genius happened on Lap 22. The track was too dry for wets, so Sainz pitted from the lead for hard tires. This was when Ferrari made a horrible and costly blunder. They called Leclerc in after Sainz, and then they told him to stay out after he was already in the pitlane; his teammate was still in the pit box.
The scream from Leclerc over the team radio, when he realized that his dream of winning Monaco from pole position was gone, sent a chill down my spine.
All Red Bull needed to do was react. That same lap, they called in Perez from the lead, then Verstappen, to pull off a perfect double stack. Perez rejoined in the lead ahead of Sainz. Then Verstappen barely edged out Leclerc on the pitlane exit and took the third position up Beau Rivage.
Another twist came on Lap 28 when Haas driver Mick Schumacher lost control at the swimming pool. He hit the inside barrier, spun twice, and had a nasty collision with the Tecpro barriers, the same place we saw Daniel Ricciardo in FP2. The young German walked away from the incident, but it brought out another red flag.
A true testament to improvements in safety technology that Mick Schumacher walked away from this crash ok.
— DNF1 (@dnf1_official) May 29, 2022
Thank goodness ??#F1 #MonacoGP pic.twitter.com/Kd1aLmaEfU
While Ferrari did not take advantage of this stoppage to change tires, opting to stay on used hards, both Red Bull cars took new medium tires.
“El Plan”
After the restart, Esteban Ocon received a five-second time penalty for an earlier incident with Hamilton. His teammate Fernando Alonso decided to drive defensively against Lewis Hamilton to preserve P7 and collect points for Alpine. Not only did Alonso keep Hamilton behind until the end, but he also backed up the rest of the field.
Fernando Alonso holding the field #MonacoGP pic.twitter.com/PtUVIX3hiw
— BWT AIpine F1 updates (@startonpole) May 29, 2022
Alonso created a 30-second gap between himself and Norris and kept everyone behind while saving his tires. Then, Alonso took off and built a three-second gap between himself and Hamilton on his preserved tires.
During the last few laps, I was nervous because the four-car train of leaders was approaching a large gaggle of backmarkers. There were already a number of incidents with backmarkers in this race.
Ecstasy for Checo
The race finished in the same order, and Checo won his first ever in the principality. He is now the most winningest Mexican driver in Formula 1’s history. Checo recently finalized a contract extension with Red Bull until 2024, and this win certainly shows the bosses, and teammate Verstappen, that he means business.
The victory clearly meant a lot for Checo, who announced before the Spanish GP that he and his wife had recently given birth to their third child. That weekend didn’t go his way, but fortunately, it happened in Monaco, of all places. After the race, he said, “This is a massive win for myself and for my country.”
Carlos Sainz was disappointed with second place. After the race, the Spaniard attributed the shortcoming to “a terrible out-lap,” he said, “stuck behind a lapped car cost me the race win today.”
Max Verstappen joined Checo on the podium in third place to secure 40 points total for Red Bull; they now lead the Constructors’ Championship over Ferrari by 36 points. Following the win in Monaco, Checo is now the third driver on the grid to have triple-digit points in the Drivers’ Championship, only six points behind Leclerc and 15 points behind Verstappen.
Heartbreak for Leclerc
It hurts a lot. That’s it.
— Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) May 29, 2022
Thanks for your continuous support ❤️ pic.twitter.com/WsXZNyoRzN
Leclerc finished the Grand Prix in an extremely disappointing fourth place; the Monegasque started from pole position, but his team of race engineers let him down, and it cost him and Ferrari the win. Leclerc was apoplectic over the radio during the race and afterward, and rightfully so. He did manage to end his streak of never finishing at Monaco, but perhaps the “curse,” as it’s known, has manifested into another problem for the Ferrari driver.
While some say that races at Monaco are boring, including this one, I believe that this race was an instant classic. Leading up to last weekend, I wrote this article about the top four wet races in history at the Circuit de Monaco, and I think the 2022 Monaco GP should be added as an honorable mention to that list.
My name is Morgan Raynal, and I am a writer for Belly Up Racing and Belly Up Sports. You can find me on Substack and Twitter.
