MONACO (Reuters) – Team by team analysis of Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, round six of the 22-race Formula One season (Listed in championship order):
RED BULL (Max Verstappen 1, Sergio Perez 16)
Verstappen’s fourth win of the season, second in Monaco and 39th of his career. The double champion is now 39 points clear of Perez at the top and also the ‘winningest’ Red Bull driver, surpassing Sebastian Vettel’s 38 for the team. Verstappen started on pole with medium tyres and finished 27 seconds clear of Alonso. Perez started last after his qualifying crash, made five pitstops and was lapped twice.
ASTON MARTIN (Fernando Alonso 2, Lance Stroll retired)
Alonso, 41, continued his great run of form with a fifth podium in six races to keep Aston Martin a single point clear of engine provider Mercedes. He started on the front row with hard tyres, pitted for mediums and then again for intermediates — a decision that cost him time. Stroll was in the wars from the start, dropping three places, hitting the wall and suffering brake issues before becoming the first to retire.
MERCEDES (Lewis Hamilton 4, George Russell 5)
Hamilton took a bonus point for fastest lap. Russell was hit with a five second penalty for an unsafe return to the track, nearly taking out Perez, but pulled out enough of a gap on Leclerc to make it immaterial. The pair started fifth and eighth respectively and both pitted for inters on lap 55, that being Hamilton’s second stop and Russell’s first.
FERRARI (Charles Leclerc 6, Carlos Sainz 8)
Local hero Leclerc was handed a three-placed grid drop after qualifying for impeding Norris, and started sixth. They ran in their fourth and sixth grid positions initially. Leclerc did not pit until lap 44, when he switched from hard to medium. The rain did Ferrari no favours, with Sainz losing three positions when he went off track in sector two.
ALPINE (Esteban Ocon 3, Pierre Gasly 7)
Ocon gave Alpine their first podium of the season, starting third thanks to Leclerc’s penalty. It was the third podium of his career. The 21 points, in Renault-owned Alpine’s 50th race under that name, were the team’s biggest haul of the season and lifted them ahead of McLaren. Ocon started on medium tyres, Gasly on hards. Gasly started seventh.
MCLAREN (Lando Norris 9, Oscar Piastri 10)
Norris started 10th, Piastri 11th. Norris pitted on lap 50 and just before the rain, which cost him some time, then again on lap 54. Piastri made one stop on lap 54.
HAAS (Nico Hulkenberg 17, Kevin Magnussen 19)
Magnussen retired in the closing stages after hitting the barriers at Rascasse and pitting on lap 57 but was classified. Hulkenberg had a five second penalty for causing a collision with Sargeant at turn five on the opening lap. The German pitted after lap one to go from mediums to hard. He served the penalty on lap 56, pitted again on lap 60 for wets and got a further 10 second penalty for not serving the first one correctly.
ALFA ROMEO (Valtteri Bottas 11, Guanyu Zhou 13)
Zhou pitted at the end of the first lap to go onto hard tyres but lost a place to Perez. Bottas was the first to switch to inters when the rain came and made up four places.
ALPHATAURI (Nyck de Vries 12, Yuki Tsunoda 15)
De Vries had his best race yet with AlphaTauri, keeping out of trouble. Tsunoda had a brake problem which made him feel like a passenger in the wet.
WILLIAMS (Alexander Albon 14, Logan Sargeant 18)
Sargeant was the most overtaken man in the race, and suffered a puncture after fitting his only set of hard tyres. It was also his first F1 race in the wet. Albon described his race as boring but tough.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Toby Davis)
