Verstappen won the Monaco Grand Prix from the pole without facing a battle for the lead, but his fourth win of the season was anything but an easy cruise.
The threat of rain loomed throughout the race, throwing a wrench in planned pit strategy and forcing Verstappen to stay out on worn medium-compound tires ahead of Fernando Alonso on hard tires. When the rain did come, it came slowly, starting at just the famous hairpin corner before spreading throughout the track, sending drivers scrambling to the pits for intermediate tires.
“It was quite a difficult one because we were on the medium initially and Fernando was on the hard tire,” Verstappen said. “We didn’t want to go that long, but we had too. The rain was coming, and we didn’t know really what was going on.”
“The tires were graining and then took a few laps to get through that graining phase and the pace picked up a little bit, but it was still very tricky to drive. Then it started to rain lap by lap, and then we had to make the call to go on to the inters.”
The rain continued throughout the closing laps, with some drivers, including Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez, opting for fully-wet tires, but Verstappen extended the range of his intermediates to the end and pushed through the slippery conditions.
“It was incredibly slippery. When you are that far in the lead you don’t want to push too hard, but you don’t want to lose too much time, so it’s quite difficult in that scenario. I clipped the walls a few times, it was super difficult out there, but that’s Monaco!”
Verstappen still remained class-of-the-field despite the conditions and finished with a 27.921-second gap to second place Fernando Alonso.
It’s Alonso’s 103rd podium finish in his Formula 1 career. He showed pace that, at times, was faster than Max Verstappen.
However, Aston Martin opted to pit him for a fresh set of slick tires just as the rain started, gambling incorrectly that it wouldn’t spread. That put Alonso on the back foot as he had to come back down pit road for intermediates. He knew firsthand, then, how slippery the track was.
“Braking was extremely fragile,” Alonso said. “I think everyone did an amazing job today to keep the cars on track.”
On the other hand, Estaban Ocon also matched his qualifying result with a third-place finish to earn his third-ever podium.
“It was a super weekend from everyone at the team,” Ocon said. “I hope this is the first of many.”
It wasn’t an easy ride for him either, as he was tussling with Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz throughout the pit window. Sainz ended up spinning under braking and hit the barriers, ultimately recovering for eighth.
The Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell took fourth and fifth, even despite a five-second time penalty to Russell for an unsafe region that collected Sergio Perez. Charles Leclerc and Pierre Gasly both got past Carlos Sainz as well and stayed there for sixth and seventh.
McLaren enjoyed a good finish, too, a rarity for the team thus far in the season, with two cars in the points. Lando Norris showed impressive speed late, even being the fastest car on the drying track, but he was unable to make any positions out of it.
Two drivers ended up out of their cars after repeated hits with the barriers: Kevin Magnussen, who remained on slick tires the longest in an attempt to jump straight to full wets that didn’t work out, and Lance Stroll.
F1 returns for the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona on June 4th.
| POS | DRIVER | TIME/RETIRED | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1:48:51.980 | 25 | |
| 2 | +27.921s | 18 | |
| 3 | +36.990s | 15 | |
| 4 | +39.062s | 13 | |
| 5 | +56.284s | 10 | |
| 6 | +61.890s | 8 | |
| 7 | +62.362s | 6 | |
| 8 | +63.391s | 4 | |
| 9 | +1 lap | 2 | |
| 10 | +1 lap | 1 | |
| 11 | +1 lap | 0 | |
| 12 | +1 lap | 0 | |
| 13 | +1 lap | 0 | |
| 14 | +1 lap | 0 | |
| 15 | +2 laps | 0 | |
| 16 | +2 laps | 0 | |
| 17 | +2 laps | 0 | |
| 18 | +2 laps | 0 | |
| 19 | DNF | 0 | |
| NC | DNF | 0 |
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