Red Bull driver Max Verstappen of the Netherlands celebrates as he stands on his automotive after successful the Monaco Formula One Grand Prix, on the Monaco racetrack, in Monaco, Sunday, May 28, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP
Double world champion Max Verstappen led a soggy and slippery Monaco Grand Prix from begin to end on Sunday to stretch his Formula One lead to 39 factors and earn Red Bull a sixth win in as many races this season.
In a race livened up by a downpour after a processional 51 laps in dry situations, Spaniard Fernando Alonso completed second for Aston Martin however a large 27.9 seconds behind on the chequered flag.
Frenchman Esteban Ocon accomplished the rostrum in third place for Renault-owned Alpine, their first of the season, with Mercedes’ seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton fourth and taking a bonus level for quickest lap.
“That was a real Monaco,” Verstappen mentioned after a 78-lap race that lasted an hour and 48 minutes.
“It was incredibly slippery and when you are that far in the lead you don’t want to push too hard but also you don’t want to lose too much time so it’s quite difficult in that scenario.
“I clipped the wall just a few instances and it was tremendous tough out there. But that is Monaco.”
Closest rival
The win was Verstappen’s fourth of the season, second in Monaco and 39th of his career. Mexican team mate Sergio Perez, his closest title rival, started in last position after a qualifying crash and finished two laps down in 16th.
Mercedes’ George Russell was fifth and home hero Charles Leclerc finished sixth for Ferrari.
Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, McLaren’s Lando Norris and team mate Oscar Piastri completed the points positions.
Verstappen led away cleanly from the start on the medium tyres, with Alonso opting for the harder compound and slotting in close behind with no change to the rest of the points positions.
If the podium ended up being the same top three as on the starting grid, the rain brought added excitement as drivers slid around the track, some getting too close to the barriers, before pitting for intermediate tyres and then full wets.
Verstappen delayed his pitstop to coincide with the rain while Alonso initially pitted for medium tyres and then had to come in again for intermediates, losing a possible chance to take the lead.
“We thought to play an extended sport with the technique however Max drove tremendous properly on the medium tyres and prolonged that first stint. We did not have any likelihood after which on the finish the rain put issues a bit sophisticated out there,” said Alonso.
“It was not straightforward and I used to be shocked there have been no security automobiles from incidents, I feel everybody was doing an incredible job immediately to hold the automobiles on monitor.”
While Alonso celebrated his fifth podium of the season, and finest end result but for Aston Martin, Canadian workforce mate Lance Stroll retired after repeated tangles with rivals.
The solely different driver not working on the end was Haas’s Kevin Magnussen, whose workforce mate Nico Hulkenberg was seventeenth in the workforce’s a hundred and fiftieth race and picked up a five-second penalty for inflicting a collision with Williams’ Logan Sargeant.
Sargeant spent his afternoon displaying that overtaking is feasible on the world’s most glamorous avenue circuit by permitting a string of drivers to get previous him.
Perez pitted on the finish of lap one for laborious tyres to go the gap, leaping Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou and Hulkenberg in the pits to transfer up to 18th however his race quickly fell aside in a nightmare of 5 pitstops.
He was additionally lapped by Verstappen lengthy earlier than half approach.
