Max Verstappen increased his lead in the championship over Leclerc with third place over the host, who dominated the early stages, followed by a long delay due to a rainstorm wetting the Principality.
It started to rain just before the scheduled start time, which was initially shifted by nine minutes, before it was extended to 16 with a mandatory lap to form a safety car – for safety reasons according to the FIA, as there was no previous run. wet, this weekend – and in this gap the flood intensified.
The cars were sent for two formation tours behind the safety car, with the procedure halted at the end of the second as the rain fell to such an extent that huge sections of standing water formed, with rivers flowing around Rascasse as the field passed, heading for the pits.
The cars stayed there for nearly 50 minutes before being sent on a second lap to form a safety car, which meant all cars had to be fitted with extremely wet tires.
After two laps behind the safe ca, the race started with a moving start at the end of the third lap.
Leclerc overtook Sainz, Perez and Verstappen, his Ferrari spinning around as he applied full power for the first time in the box straight, but staying in the right direction until the Monegasque led the field to Ste Devote.
They managed to pass unscathed but scattered, with many drivers stepping far away from Casino Square as Leclerc reached a 1.8s lead by the end of the first lap as Ferrari drivers set their tires on fire faster than the pursuing Red Bull duo behind .
Leclerc soon pulled away from Sainz, the two Ferrari drivers faster at different points on the track, with the leader regularly pulling a second clean through Sector 1 before Sainz stole a few tenths back in the second and third segments as they made their way down the track. . Brackets for a 1m30s lap (the first race lap was 1m43.218s for Leclerc).
By lap 15, Leclerc was leading by five seconds, with leaders discussing with their teams whether to switch to intermediate, as Pierre Gasley, Stroll and Latifi did before the start.
Sainz insisted on staying outside and moving directly to pictures, which was the best option for Ferrari, but his hand was forced when Perez, who advocated for inters, took them at the end of the 16th lap.
His pace was so strong in this compound that when Ferrari led Leclerc in the 18th lap, as Verstappen did the same and they both took internships, Perez jumped forward and quickly chased Sainz.
The Spaniard led to the 21st lap, until then Perez was only a few seconds behind, although he had already stopped and indeed, when Sainz finished a slippery lap, Red Bull led Perez and Verstappen.
When they came out of the pits on lap 23, Verstappen seemed to be getting very close to the pitlain exit line, if not jump over it, Perez jumped over Sainz to take the lead, with Verstappen in third place and Leclerc in fourth.
The former dominant leader was introduced for the second time a few seconds behind Sainz, Ferrari sending him confusing radio messages about whether or not to enter and double-stack.
Now all the leaders were running hard, but this time the Red Bulls seemed to get a better warm-up – Sainz almost dropped his car as he ran close behind Perez at the end of lap 23.
Just as Perez began to cement his lead as Sainz saved his side moment and then defended himself against Verstappen and the disappointed Leclerc in the back, the race was called off again.
Mick Schumacher was the first driver to take a hard drive on lap 18, and while battling Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu, he missed his Haas by running between the two swindlers at Swimming Pool.
The impact was not great, but the corners and forces broke Schumacher’s car in half, and as a result of the need to repair the barrier and clear a large amount of debris, the red flags came out again after the accident for the first time. covered by a virtual and then a car for complete safety.
After a 20-minute break, Perez led the group back to a new smooth start after two more laps behind the safety car – the line behind Sainz, Verstappen, Leclerc, George Russell and Lando Norris, who lost to his British counterpart at intervals of several laps and Mercedes stayed on full wet for a few more laps before moving straight to the pictures.
When restarting on lap 33, with Ferrari with the same set of hard drives they performed before stopping and Perez and Verstappen moving to new environments, Perez was not challenged in Ste Devote.
He really locked up, approaching Mirabeau, but still took the lead of almost a second when the pack returned to racing speed for 1m23s.
A few laps later, they reached 1m18s, with Ferrari cars not giving up when the tires warmed up slowly, even though they used a harder mixture.
But after the leaders exchanged the fastest laps between the four cars in the next phase of the race, the DRS turned on and the pace reached 1m16s, Perez began to clear and Leclerc, unable to stay in the 1m16s, lost contact with Verstappen in the fourth.
By lap 45, Perez’s lead was 2.2s ahead of Sainz, and his main concern was to catch the back of the field to go around the backmarkers – a long snake formed behind Fernando Alonso, who retreated from Norris while leading Lewis Hamilton and Esteban Ocon .
But 10 laps later, Ferrari hoped Perez’s tires would wear out and finally arrived and the leader returned to the 1m18s bracket, which meant that Sainz quickly erased his lead and came close to under second, with Verstappen doing the same and Leclerc also managed to make a turnaround. his previous losses.
Ferrari called on Sainz to put pressure on Perez, as the leaders did catch the traffic – Verstappen did not fight so hard to keep his media alive until the final, which so far was two hours after the repeated delays.
A final 10-minute chase ensued, with Sainz initially threatening to make a move in the harassment, but he got the closest and twice nearly collided with Perez’s back, in a hairpin.
But a bold move for the lead never came, and Verstappen didn’t try a risky pass to Sainz either, and Leclerc kept a distance of fourth while the tense stalemate played out.
Perez finished 64 laps and finished with a final difference of 1.1 seconds, Sainz only 0.3 seconds from Verstappen, and the first four covered with only 2.9 seconds.
Russell finished fifth alone after being solidly knocked out of the lap leaders after the second mobile start, with Norris standing up in the pursuit of the flag as he was far behind thanks to Alonso’s slow pace but remaining sixth for McLaren.
Alonso picked up his laps as the final approached and finished 4.0s away from Hamilton, who battled Esteban Ocon before the second red flag.
The pair collided in Turn 1 on one stage, for which Ocon received a five-second bonus, which dropped him from the ninth point on the road behind Hamilton in the final.
This raised Valteri Botas to ninth, Sebastian Vettel to the final point in 10th place (full points were awarded as over 75% of the set distance was met) and Gasley 11th, the AlphaTauri driver rose through the field of his intermediate laps during the pre-match laps Sainz and Russell stayed outside to go straight to the pictures.
Two other cars failed to finish: Alex Albon, who stopped in the pits before the final stages, and Kevin Magnussen, who retired due to a loss of water pressure just before the Schumacher crash.
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