The two-time world champion achieved his best finish of the season, one position ahead of Hamilton, who was unable to pass due to Alonso's incredibly sluggish speed.
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Fernando Alonso claims it is not his problem that his slow pace during Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix irritated Lewis Hamilton. With a seventh-place finish in Monaco, the two-time world champion achieved his best finish of the season, one position ahead of Hamilton, who was unable to pass due to Alonso’s incredibly sluggish speed following the restart following Mick Schumacher’s massive crash that red-flagged the race. Alpine insisted that Alonso’s car was fine, and the Spaniard subsequently revealed that he was only saving tyre life because the team wasn’t sure if his medium tyres would make it through the last stint.
“I think we didn’t have the tyres or the tyre life to finish the race when it was 33 laps,” Alonso said. “It’s a sprint race, we had two choices: refit the hard tyres from the beginning of the race, or put the medium tyre. We put the medium tyre, but our life estimation was shorter than 33. So we didn’t know if we could finish the race, so I managed a lot the tyres for 15 laps, and then I pushed for the remaining 15 when they told me that Esteban [Ocon] had the penalty.”
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When informed that Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton was getting frustrated with the Spaniard’s race pace, as was evident from the Mercedes man’s radio communication, Alonso simply replied, “Not my problem.” The Brit, on the other hand, did not make much of a fuss over Alonso after the race. “It is what it is,” the seven-time world champion said. “I was just cruising behind him.”
Sergio Perez of Red Bull won his first race of 2022 by 1.1 seconds after a nail-biting finish in Monaco, with Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen unable to pass the Mexican – and Charles Leclerc losing out after slipping from pole to P4. The race was delayed due to rain, and after the cars completed one lap, a red flag was called, forcing them to return to the pits. Teams waited for a rolling race start behind the Safety Car on wet tyres, with gazebos unfolded. The Safety Car came in for Lap 3 of 77, and Leclerc took the lead, followed by Sainz, Perez, and Verstappen.
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The front-runners switched to intermediates, with Perez taking the lead on Lap 17, followed by Leclerc and Verstappen two laps later, while Sainz went straight to hards on Lap 21, followed by Leclerc for a Ferrari double-stack. One lap later, Red Bull made an overcut with their own double-stack, putting Perez, Sainz, Verstappen, and a furious Leclerc in fourth place.
On the restart after a nasty Mick Schumacher crash, Perez maintained his lead and the mediums held their own, but they began to fade after Lap 55, with about 10 minutes remaining. Sainz, Verstappen, and Leclerc were closing in on them now. Sainz came close to losing the race in the last laps, almost putting his nose in front at the hairpin, but he would win – a tremendous statement following a poor Spanish Grand Prix. Perez’s margin of victory over Sainz was just 1.154s at the end of Lap 64, with Verstappen just 0.337s behind the Spaniard and Leclerc finishing 2.9s behind in P4.
