Ferrari's Charles Leclerc cruised to victory in his home race in Monte-Carlo, moving Prince Albert to tears on the podium and bringing the traffic in all of Monaco - and much of the south of France - to a standstill. It was also a big day for Pirelli, with their hard and medium compound tyres running the full GP distance non-stop due to a red flag incident on the opening lap. With every driver thus being given a free tyre change in the pit lane, and with Monaco uniquely offering a low-abrasion track surface, the onus was on Leclerc to run his hard-compound tyres through to the finish and to win at the slowest possible pace. On paper, Pirelli said that this would be possible. In reality, Leclerc was stepping into the F1 Unknown. He pulled it off, though, with McLaren-Mercedes' Oscar Piastri brilliantly chasing him virtually all the way. Indeed, the four leading drivers - Leclerc, Piastri, Ferrari's Carlos Sainz and McLaren-Mercedes' Lando Norris (all of whom switched to hard tyres for the re-start) - were often covered by no more than four seconds - a spectacular sight at Monaco, where the leader in other years has usually broken away to secure an easy margin. George Russell drove exceptionally well to finish fifth for Mercedes, running Pirelli mediums non-stop to beat Red Bull-Honda's Max Verstappen (who stopped on lap 52 to switch from mediums to used hards). Despite the fresh rubber, Verstappen could do nothing about Russell, who made no errors on his older tyres, thereby proving the concept of a "free stop" on this day to be moot. With camera set up in the Princess Grace Rose Garden, Peter Windsor looks back at a memorable day in the Principality.
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Alternative race stats courtesy of Aleš Norskŷ:
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Images: Pirelli, Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Wikimedia Commons
Music: Floating Home (Brian Bolger)
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