Monegasque Charles Leclerc won the Monaco Grand Prix for the first time, an emotional first hometown win. He enjoyed a perfect race, too, starting on pole and leading every lap en route to victory. It’s a huge win for Leclerc who has never been able to win at the track despite starting from the pole before.
“No words can explain that,” Leclerc said. “It’s such a difficult race. I think the fact that, twice I’ve been starting on pole position and we couldn’t quite make it makes it even better in a way.
“It means a lot, obviously. It’s the race that made me dream of being a Formula One driver one day. So, yeah, it was a difficult race emotionally, because fifteen laps from the end you’re just hoping that nothing happens and, already, the emotions were coming,” he concluded.
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri finished second and Leclerc’s Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz rounded out the podium, with the top three finishing in the same order they started.
McLaren’s Lando Norris finished fourth, with Mercedes’ George Russell rounding out the top five. That means Max Verstappen finished back in sixth, failing to show the dominant speed he has enjoyed the past few seasons.
The race was a story in two parts, with a chaotic start succeeded by follow-the-leader tire-saving racing.
After the green flag flew on lap one, Kevin Magnussen pulled an opportunistic dive on Sergio Perez up the hill, which went wrong as he bounced off the wall and into Perez, collecting Magnussen’s Haas teammate Nico Hulkenberg and taking all three cars out of the race. Perez’s car especially was completely destroyed.
Further along on that same lap, Carlos Sainz suffered a puncture after contact with Oscar Piastri and missed the corner at the Casino complex, sending him to the back. Sainz was able to benefit from the red flag flying from the Magnussen incident, however, and was returned to third, his position at the last scoring loop when the field sat on pitlane for barrier repairs.
The top four all put on hard tires while on the pitlane, with the stewards allowing that to qualify to meet the requirement to change tire compounds at least once in the race. That meant none of the top four had to make a pit stop during the race once during the race.
It then became a tire-saving race with no passing at all on the track as groups strung out, with the Ferraris and McLarens together followed by the Mercedes drivers and Max Verstappen fighting for best-of-the-rest.
However, Charles Leclerc managed to find a new gear in the final ten laps, running over a second a lap faster than Oscar Piastri throughout that stretch for a dominant victory.
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