Red Bull’s Sergio Perez won the rain-mottled 2022 Monaco Grand Prix that began with chaos but then evolved into a snoozefest with no overtakes for the final hour of the race. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, Jr. finished second behind Perez with Perez’s Red Bull teammate, Max Verstappen, finishing off the podium in third place.
The race start was delayed for nearly an hour due to the unexpected arrival of a rain shower that dumped massive amounts of water on the track. When the race was finally allowed to begin, the first two laps were run behind the safety car before a running start with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc leading the way on pole position. The first 15 laps was essentially a parade of cars as the cars mostly remained in their starting positions while Leclerc slowly pulled away for a small time advantage until pit crossovers began from Laps 16-24 and Ferrari bungled their pit strategy, allowing Perez to get in front of Sainz, Jr. and Verstappen to get in front of Leclerc.
Three laps later, Haas’ Mick Schumacher crashed into a barrier and brought out first, a safety car and then a red flag as course officials were forced to repair the barrier Schumacher crashed into. That delay put the race under the official tow-hour timed window and ensured that they would be unable to run the full race distance of 78 laps.
Once the race re-started on Lap 30, there were no further changes in order of the top 10 cars for the remainder of the race on the track notoriously difficult for overtaking.
With the results, Verstappen extends his Formula One driver’s championship lead over Leclerc to nine points with Verstappen sitting on 125 points to Leclerc’s 116 points.
2022 Monaco Grand Prix Top 10 Finishers
1] Sergio Pérez Red Bull
2] Carlos Sainz Jr. Ferrari
3] Max Verstappen Red Bull
4] Charles Leclerc Ferrari
5] George Russell Mercedes
6] Lando Norris McLaren
7] Fernando Alonso Alpine
8] Lewis Hamilton Mercedes
9] Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo
10] Sebastian Vettel Aston Martin
