Monaco GP: The 2023 Monaco GP is up and running with mighty battles to conquer the “jewel in the crown of F1”. Polesitter Max Verstappen is was immediately off to a flyer to consolidate his well-earned advantage coming up in the race. Fernando Alonso closely followed the Dutchman into the first corner, only to settle into the second place thereon. As expected, the race has seldom seen any overtaking so far except for Sergio Perez. For the first half of the race, the top 10 remained unchanged. Follow Formula 1 Live Updates on InsideSport.IN.
However, amidst what appeared to be a “status quo”dominated race initially, had some interesting and controversial events soon into it. Red Bull driver Sergio Perez and Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll had an incident on lap 35 which raised quite a few eyebrows. Checo had a qualifying to forget in the streets of Monaco. Soon into the Q1 round on Saturday, the Mexican crashed heavily on his second push lap at Sainte Devote, after losing control of the rear of his car, and slammed the barrier to cause a red flag.
A major debacle for Perez on Saturday didn’t look to end as he started P20 on Monaco. This more often than not means there are seldom chances that a driver can even get to points let alone a win. Though after getting a good start early on into the race, Perez was stranded in P17 for a decent while at the tail of Stroll. Irony had it that a Red Bull and an Aston Martin are still the two leading cars in the race, while both of their teammates are having an absolute forgetful weekend.
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Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll make contact; FIA investigates
On lap 35 when the “Mexican minister of defense” was on attack for a change. He closely followed Stroll, and with a gap less than under a second, Perez ultimately made a lunge around the outside. To his disappointment, there wasn’t enough space left for him to make the move stick. Consequently, he ran wide and off the track. However, the Red Bull man took the advantage and overtook Perez outside the track.
The Canadian driver was totally not happy about the move and demanded an immediate rebuttal. While Stroll demanded the position back, Perez defended the move by accusing Stroll of pushing him wide and not leaving behind any space for the Mexican.
FIA opened up an investigation into the event. However, it didn’t matter as such because Stroll did not finish the race later. Apart from his, Magnussen also faced a disappointing DNF result in Monaco. Max Verstappen took the chequered flag, followed by Alonso and Ocon to complete the podium steps. Perez finished 17th after a disheartening outing. Tell us your favorite part of the race. What did you think about the incident involving Perez and Stroll? Comment below.
