The six key F1 moments that meant Perez won Leclerc's Monaco GP

Finally, he did it. After five previous failed attempts to even reach the chequered flag in races on his home streets in car racing, Charles Leclerc went the full distance from pole position in the 2022 Monaco Grand Prix. But he came home a distraught fourth, domination disappeared.

The winner was Sergio Perez – triumphing once again in a race of chaos. In doing so, he became Mexico’s most successful F1 driver, fittingly while wearing a helmet livery tribute to Pedro Rodriguez (who he now leads 3-2 in world championship GP wins).

PLUS: Remembering Mexico's greatest F1 driver

Carlos Sainz scored his fourth podium of 2022 in second, but was once again left stunned by how close he’d came to a maiden triumph. Max Verstappen, on a sub-par weekend for the world champion, was somewhat shocked to extend his points lead over Leclerc given how a late qualifying stoppage had thwarted him for a second year in a row.

But the headline results barely scratch the surface of a race Ferrari could and should have won with either of its cars. It lost out at six critical points and so handed glory to Perez instead…

1. Rain wrecks Leclerc’s dry race hopes

Pole wins a dry Monaco race – that’s just how it is. With Sainz starting second, Leclerc, lining up on his fifth 2022 pole, was nailed-on for victory in a ‘normal’ Monaco GP.

It was not far off 10C cooler than in qualifying, but the sun had shone throughout the morning and predictions of any rain threatening the race where receding – by some estimates by as much as 50% compared to earlier forecasts.

Pre-race rain meant Leclerc's hopes of a straightforward cruise to victory from pole were immediately dashed

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

As Autosport waited for the grid to form up around us, we noticed three things. One, every rooftop and balcony overlooking the pitstraight was packed, the home fans expectant. Two, the air was close and muggy – the sun suddenly struggling to break through clouds that had built up quickly overheard in the final hour pre-start. Then there were sporadic rain drops.

This became a steady shower as Autosport left the grid. As we exited stage right, Ferrari mechanics were pushing a stack of wet tyres in the other direction. As we followed Game of Thrones actor Rose Leslie down the pitlane with her Red Bull hospitality minders, their mechanic colleagues were also hurriedly shifting wets to the grid.

The FIA soon announced the start procedure would be suspended – five minutes before the scheduled 1500 start time. A further announcement followed, explaining the formation lap would take place at 1509, behind the safety car – mandating all cars be fitted with extreme wets.

When the rolling action finally started following two further safety car formation laps, with the race length reduced at this stage to 77 laps and not 78, Leclerc was initially in complete command

It is understood that the FIA – with former World Endurance Championship race director Eduardo Freitas in charge of his second F1 event following his Spanish GP debut – delayed the start for to allow the teams ample time to change their tyres. The reason it wanted a safety car start, was “done for safety reasons in consideration that there has been no wet running this weekend” per a governing body statement.

A further seven-minute delay followed but, at 1516, Leclerc and the safety car led the pack off the grid. But, by now, the rain was hosing down. In two laps at reduced speed, the intensity of the falling water reached such a level that standing water pooled in many places and the double right of Rascasse was effectively submerged, the drainage briefly overwhelmed.

The red flags flew. But the race was not suspended – the two-hour time limit had not begun to tick down, in scenes similar to the Spa farce washout. A further 45-minute delay followed.

This ended up as long as it did for two reasons. One, the track needed to dry out and a weather break found, which was. But complicating matters was a brief grid power outage (the cars were lined up in the pitlane per the red flag procedure). This had to be fixed, but when it was the FIA couldn’t be certain the start gantry lights and grid slot marker boards would work as intended, so a decision was made that only rolling starts would follow when racing did commence.

It did so at 1605. The rolling nature helped Leclerc given it reduced any threat from Sainz, but the damage to his hopes for a clean, calm dry run to a first home win was total. He could still pull it off but had to rely on tricky strategy calls going his way.

Leclerc was in command of the race when it did get going, but as the track dried and strategy variation opened up, Ferrari stumbled

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

2. Ferrari gets two tyre calls wrong at once

When the rolling action finally started following two further safety car formation laps, with the race length reduced at this stage to 77 laps and not 78, Leclerc was initially in complete command.

Over the next 14 tours from the lap three restart, he romped clear to a lead of 6.3 seconds – typically going nearly a second quicker in sector one, before Sainz stole tenths back in sectors two and three. Verstappen, in fourth behind Perez, fell to 10.1s in arrears over the same distance.

By this stage, team radio discussion for the four leaders was dominated by talk of getting off the full wets – but with a choice, to switch to intermediates or go straight to slicks. Sainz had Lewis Hamilton’s 2016 win here in mind at this stage – secured after ignoring the inters and with Red Bull botching Daniel Ricciardo’s wet-dry tyre tactics – and was adamant that was his preferred choice, questioning an instruction to pit for inters on lap 17.

This was the lap after Perez had come in for the green-walled rubber from 8.1s behind Leclerc and now Ferrari was entering a critical phase of decision-making.

In the pack behind, Pierre Gasly, Lance Stroll and Nicholas Latifi had gone to the inters ahead of the first rolling start. Although Gasly’s progress up the order was stymied by battles, he was still reasonably quick. But he wasn’t going fast enough to make an inters call a no-brainer. Yet Perez was flying on his, displaying enough pace on his out-lap that at the end he trailed Leclerc by 24.1s when it had been 26.2s at Massenet.

“The first mistake,” Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto said later, “was underestimating, the pace of the intermediate. And the gap we had to the other cars in terms of track position.”

Two laps after Perez had made his undercut stop, Ferrari called Leclerc in. Before the Red Bull driver had pitted, Leclerc had told engineer Xavier Marcos the conditions “could be a slick but not now”. On what became his first in-lap he stated: “Inter will be much quicker, for sure”.

“I don’t understand what made us change our minds and go on the intermediates,” he said after the race, with the full knowledge of how that call then backfired.

Perez undercut Leclerc with an earlier switch to intermediates, but still had to clear Sainz

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

As Leclerc was exiting the pits with his inters, Padros warned him “[It] will be tight with Perez”, but just a few seconds later had to declare: “Gap to Perez 4.4s.” A stunning turnaround, but all was not lost.

The next time by, lap 20, Leclerc was eating into Perez’s advantage fast. But after coming up behind Alex Albon’s now slick-shod Williams at Massenet, Leclerc had to follow his friend all the way to Ste Devote (where Albon slid down the escape road) on the next tour. His radio frustrations went from an airily disappointed “ahh, Alex” to “oh come on for f***’s sake”, then “Oh! F****** hell!” once he was finally by.

But remarkably, he was still closer to Perez – 3.472s behind at the start of lap 21. That was down to 1.351s the next time by the Swimming Pool, but here Ferrari got caught out again and brought a further barge of swearing from the former dominant race leader.

Padros had called his charge in, only to try and reverse that decision eight seconds later – by which time Leclerc was in the pits and realising he’d have to slow to allow Sainz to clear the pitbox

Sainz had got his wish and was going straight to slicks from the full wets, but on the lap he came in – that 21st tour – the gap to Perez had been under four seconds, the latter’s extra pitstop almost completely erased. The hards were fitted to the new lead Ferrari – the only rubber certain to go the distance after the softs and mediums had grained on most cars in FP2.

Ferrari produced a 2.5s service for Sainz, but also had to turnaround Leclerc in a muddled double-stack stop. Padros had called his charge in, only to try and reverse that decision eight seconds later, by which time Leclerc was in the pits and realising he’d have to slow to allow Sainz to clear the pitbox. Compared to his team-mate, Leclerc lost 3.368s in total pitlane time here, 0.5s of which was spent longer in the pitbox, fulminating with fury at his sudden change in fortune.

Plenty went wrong for Leclerc over which he had no control last Sunday, but he might’ve been better off vocally insisting on going straight from full wets to slicks given his prowess to that point…

“We should have called him earlier,” Binotto said of Leclerc’s strategy options through this phase of the race. “At least a lap early [for inters]. Or if not, as we did [with Sainz], we should have stayed out and simply stayed on the extreme wet protecting the position and then maybe switching directly onto the dries.”

His second stop for slicks, double-stacked behind Sainz, meant Leclerc lost out to his team-mate and Verstappen too

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

3. Latifi holds up Sainz’s out-lap

What was clear once the two Ferraris had returned to the action on the hards, it was all about in-lap pace versus out-lap speed – this time an overcut situation. Perez versus Sainz, and Verstappen, who had gone to the inters on the same lap as Leclerc, versus the home hero.

“We were able to have a very quick in-lap,” said Perez, who also stated he had “definitely” considered going from full wets straight to slicks. “We pushed really hard. The tyre was there and the track was dry for the slicks tyres.”

Perez produced a 1m43.440s as he raced for the pits again – compared to Sainz’s 1m47.551s not long before. But what also made a massive difference was the Spaniard having to follow Latifi’s Williams from the run up the hill to Massenet, all the way to the tunnel – the Canadian passing seven blazing blue flag marker boards (Albon passed 17 in front of Leclerc earlier).

“I was wheel-spinning, obviously on a wet patch,” Sainz said of Latifi getting by at the pit exit on his slicks out-lap. “And he just managed to sneak in ahead of me.”

The damage was done, Perez pitted for hards and came out still ahead. Sainz clouting the outside Casino Square barrier didn’t help and the next time by the pitstraight he caught two massive slides.

“The race should have ended there,” said Sainz of his impressive catch. “I went on the damp patch and suddenly the car gave me a massive oversteer moment.”

Leclerc had insisted on “no talking” when Padros broached the subject of the race not even being at half distance now he was on slicks. When he’d completed his out-lap, he found Verstappen emerging from the pits just ahead. Leclerc jostled in his title rival’s wake up Beau Rivage, but there was no way by.

Sainz's long stint on ageing wets allowed inter-shod Perez to close, and losing time behind Latifi on his out-lap dropped him behind the Mexican

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

4. Red Bulls survive pit exit saga

Now for a little more timeline alteration. In the race’s aftermath, Ferrari filed a protest over how both Red Bulls had exited the pits. The problem, it suggested, was that both had appeared to touch the yellow pit exit line and each possibly crossed it.

The penalty for this, based on Yuki Tsunoda crossing the Austrian GP pit entry line in 2021, would be a five-second addition to their race times. Given Perez’s eventual winning margin over Leclerc’s fourth place was 2.922s, the legal wrangling really mattered.

The argument over Verstappen’s indiscretion, which did appear the more egregious, was heard first. Ferrari argued, per an official FIA bulletin, “that on the exit from the pits on lap 23, Car 1 [Verstappen] put part of its left front and rear tyres on the tarmac on the LEFT side of the yellow line” and that “this was in breach of the Race Director’s Event Notes”. Plus, put forward the red team, “that the Notes indicate to the teams how they are to act and the teams abide by them even if they are in contradiction to the International Sporting Code”.

Ferrari’s race director Event Notes points – based on Freitas’s instruction “drivers must keep to the right” all the way until the pit exit ends at Monaco – was dismissed as the ISC “takes precedent over any interpretation of the Notes” as the code had not been breached

The ISC article in question – Article 5 c) of Chapter IV of Appendix L – was updated for 2022 and states “that at the pit exit a car ‘must not cross’ the line”. As all parties agreed this hadn’t happened, and with a precedent from Lance Stroll’s similar incident at the 2021 Monaco race, Verstappen was cleared.

Ferrari’s race director Event Notes points – based on Freitas’s instruction “drivers must keep to the right” all the way until the pit exit ends at Monaco – was dismissed as the ISC “takes precedent over any interpretation of the Notes” as the code had not been breached. The Notes just hadn’t been updated from 2021 to reflect that.

Ferrari then accepted Perez’s car “did not have any part of its front or rear tyres on the left of the yellow line” and so conceded its case. Perez’s win, when it came, would stand.

Schumacher's crash again neutralised the race, with Perez leading Sainz, Verstappen and Leclerc

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

5. Red Bull’s “risky” restart tyre call pays off

After triggering the pit exit saga for the race’s aftermath, Perez spent the next three laps clear in the lead – building up an advantage of 1.5s. But as the leader’s 26th lap was ending this was imperilled when Mick Schumacher crashed heavily at the chicane.

The Haas driver was fighting Zhou Guanyu over 16th when he lost the rear of his car between the Swimming Pool chicanes and spun through 360 degrees. Hitting the Tecpro barrier sideways meant that when that structure absorbed the hit and shifted with the car, its weight ripped the German’s car in two – transmission and rear wing together, debris strewn everywhere. He was unhurt, with a lot of energy thankfully dissipated.

The race was initially placed under the virtual safety car, which became a full safety car on lap 28 and then on lap 30 the race was stopped again. An FIA statement explaining this sequence stated: “The procedure to first put out the VSC, then SC and red flag was firstly to neutralise the race so it was safe, and then to allow the safety car to be deployed in the correct location to avoid needing to allow cars to pass, which would have slowed the recovery procedure. The red flag was shown when it became clear that the repair to the Tecpro barrier would take a significant amount of time.”

After another 20-minute wait, the cars took a second rolling start. Even without the grid power problems, this would have been the case, because away from the racing line the track was still damp. That’s not considered sporting for a standing start, which Verstappen anyway said “wouldn't have been fair”.

The Red Bulls had switched to their only set of new mediums, while the Ferraris stayed on the hards they’d been running previously (the only set they had available, other than new mediums too – the softs just not an option given the high wear rate in practice after just a handful of laps).

“The call was quite risky,” said Verstappen. “[For restarts, mediums] have a little bit better grip and because we already did a few laps on the hard tyres, they were a bit cold.”

At Ferrari, “we believed that the medium would have had graining,” reflected Binotto. “The hard tyres were a lot more resilient and would have given us some opportunity at the end of the stint.”

It may have been academic given the ease of negotiating a rolling start on the tight Monaco track, but running the mediums meant Perez’s risk of succumbing to a Sainz attack at Ste Devote on the lap 33 restart was negated.

Taking medium tyres for the restart, Perez was under constant pressure from Sainz but didn't yield despite this lock-up

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

6. Monaco’s dry nature saves Perez

Ferrari’s prediction did come true, but only after Perez had completed 16 laps as the leaders worked their way from the 1m23s to the low 1m16s – reaching maximum advantage over Sainz of 3.655s. By now it was clear the race would timeout at two hours, but the early stalemate of traded fastest laps between the four leaders suddenly got interesting.

Verstappen could see that “Checo had quite a lot of front graining and Carlos was struggling a bit with the rear” – the times at the front falling back to the 1m19s. With thick bands of grained rubber across both fronts, Perez was struggling with major understeer at Massenet and Casino Square. But critically his traction out of Portier meant he was rarely in any real danger of an assault at the tunnel-exit chicane.

Instead, Sainz twice nearly hit the leader at the Loews hairpin, where Perez parked strategically on the inside line there.

In the end, then Perez got what Leclerc had so badly wanted – Monaco’s impossible passing nature protecting his lead to the finish

“I said ‘I'm gonna make him spin’ because you were so slow,” Sainz later pointed out to Perez in the post-race press conference.

Perez’s pace disappearing meant Leclerc eroded the 2.5s gap that had crept up to Verstappen – the former leader’s chase appearing somewhat half-hearted and in any case not helped by moments such as a big slide at Mirabeau on lap 40.

“But then towards the end,” concluded Perez, “I managed to clear up the graining a bit. [That] brought some lap time with it and we managed to bring it home a bit safer.”

In the end, then Perez got what Leclerc had so badly wanted – Monaco’s impossible passing nature protecting his lead to the finish. There, joy was the emotion for the victor and frustration for Sainz, Verstappen found delight and Leclerc’s home pain endured.

Perez's first win of the season took him past Pedro Rodriguez's tally and makes him Mexico's most successful F1 driver

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images