F1 Monaco GP: Leclerc wins on home turf despite lap one crash

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc became the first Monegasque to win the Monaco Grand Prix since Louis Chiron in 1931. The Scuderia man took the chequered flag seven seconds ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri while Carlos Sainz took the final podium. Sadly, the race was marred by a lap one collision between the two Haas cars and Red Bull’s Sergio Perez. The race was delayed by 40 minutes. The red flag allowed Sainz to change the punctured tyre without losing the third place. 

F1 Monaco GP: Lap One carnage

Once the lights went out, the front three drivers, Leclerc, Piastri and Sainz got off to a clean start, but the race quickly came to a halt as there was a massive collision between the two Haas drivers, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg, and Perez. After Turn One, Perez was clipped by Magnussen sending the Red Bull car into the barrier and then spinning across the race track taking out Hulkenberg. Even though it was a high-speed incident, one was seriously hurt. 

Before the race was red-flagged, another crash took place between the two Alpine teammates. Esteban Ocon tried to make an overambitious overtake move but ended up colliding with Pierre Gasly’s car. This incident launched Ocon violently up in the air only to land violently on the tarmac. Gasly was lucky to escape unscathed and finished tenth, but Ocon was forced to retire. To make matters worse, the latter faces a five-place grid penalty in the next Canadian Grand Prix. 

F1 Monaco GP: Third time lucky

The winless streak on home soil finally came to an end for Charles Leclerc. Needless to say fans weren’t too bothered how the victory came as the lap one crash did take the sting out of it. Leclerc got a smooth and quick launch and then there was no stopping him. After the restart of the race both the Ferrari and McLaren teams decided to opt for hard compound tyres. initially, Leclerc was in full tyre conservation mode and drove quite slowly. In the entire race, Piastri got a sniff to overtake the Monegasque, but in the end, it was smooth sailing for Leclerc. The top 10 remained unchanged after the restart of the race. 

The fight for third was heating up between Sainz and McLaren’s Lando Norris, but the Spaniard managed to keep the Englishman at bay. After this result, in all races this season, Leclerc hasn’t finished below the top four and Sainz below the top five. With such consistency from both the drivers, Ferrari is second in the constructor’s standing and only 24 points behind Red Bull.  

F1 Monaco GP: A race to forget for Verstappen

Defending champion Max Verstappen must have felt that everything was against him this weekend. He only managed to finish a lowly sixth splitting the two Mercedes, George Russell in fifth and Lewis Hamilton coming seventh. The Dutchman tried to conserve the medium compound tyres as best as possible, but he had to pit and opt for hard tyres. In the closing stages, the Red Bull racer tried his level best to put some pressure on Russell, but the Mercedes man shut the door for any overtaking opportunity. 

Yuki Tsunoda from RB continued his good form and collected four vital points as he further cemented his tenth position in the driver’s championship. There was good news for both Williams’ Alexander Albon and Gasly as they scored their first points of the season.