There’s a new name at the top of the drivers’ championship as Max Verstappen’s victory at the Monaco Grand Prix moved him ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the standings.
The Red Bull driver was joined on the podium by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris of McLaren.
There was disappointment for pole-sitter Charles Leclerc, who suffered a mechanical issue on his way to the grid.
3 Legs 4 Wheels looks at the reaction after the race:
Max Verstappen – 1st (Red Bull):
“I’m super happy to win the Monaco Grand Prix. It’s such a tricky track and you need a smooth weekend so I’m very pleased with what we have achieved as a Team and of course with Honda. I just had to focus on my own race and make sure I had a clean start. Of course it all looked under control but to keep your focus for so many laps is the hardest part because it’s easy to relax when you’re in the lead and make a mistake, so you have to keep reminding yourself to leave your thoughts on the road and stay focused. I think pace wise, we were always in control because every time someone tried to push me in terms of lap time, we were able to respond and increase the gap. I’ve never been on the podium here and then the first time it’s a win, so it’s a bit of redemption for the other races I’ve had here. Looking ahead to Baku, Mercedes I think are still the ones to beat, they are very quick on the normal tracks. We are leading the championship and I hope of course to be there at the end of the season because that’s the most important thing so we cannot get carried away. But for now, a massive thank you to everyone in the factory and here at the track, we won the Monaco Grand Prix so let’s enjoy it.”
Carlos Sainz – 2nd (Ferrari):
“The first podium in a Ferrari is an incredible feeling that I will never forget, especially being in Monaco! We knew we had a chance and the pace to make it to the podium this weekend and we executed a flawless race. The bittersweet feeling is still there though as I feel for Charles and for the team. All of us here at the track and back home in Maranello are working incredibly hard to be competitive and to make our way back to the top. So it was very unfortunate that today we could not fight with two cars. From my side, I am obviously happy with P2 because I think it was the maximum we could achieve today from where we started. We are still missing the final step that we all want to make, but if we keep pushing like this I’m sure we will get there sooner rather than later! Forza Ferrari!”
Lando Norris – 3rd (McLaren):
“Awesome. Monaco podium! It’s pretty incredible, I never thought it could happen coming into this weekend at all, so I’m super, super happy. I’m proud of the team for what we’ve achieved this weekend. We’ve made some good progress. We’ve still got more work to do – it’s not like we can let-up now – but another trophy and a lot of points for us, which is pretty awesome. A big thanks to the whole team and everyone back at the factory as well for all the work they’re putting into it. It’s paying off, and I hope this is motivation to work even harder and keep bringing improvements.”
Christian Horner – Team Principal (Red Bull):
It’s a phenomenal day for the Team. Max was disappointed yesterday that we didn’t get to see him deliver a pole position lap but he dealt with the frustration well and when the opportunity presented itself today he seized it with both hands, driving faultlessly from start to finish to deliver our fifth Monaco victory. Checo also drove an incredibly strong race, the strategy worked well and he had brilliant pace in clean air enabling him to finish fourth. It’s Honda’s first win here since Senna in 1992, the first time they’ve led the championship since 1991 and we have to credit them for their hard work in helping us get to this point. They’ve done a great job and to have three Honda cars in the top six is a fantastic result. As a Team we have great strength in depth and finishing first or second in the first five races of the season is a phenomenal example of teamwork and our ability to fight. There is a long way to go in this championship but we should always enjoy the wins. Commiserations to Charles and Ferrari, it was a tough day for them but great to see them back up there in the mix. The championship is very tight at the top and today was an important step for us.”
Charles Leclerc – DNS (Ferrari):
“It was a tough one today. I really felt for the whole team. After what happened in qualifying, the mechanics did an incredible job and gave absolutely everything to get me back on track for the race. I was really looking forward to finally be fighting for the win for us here. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. Not starting the race was difficult to take, especially at home. I was emotional in the car when I realised that there was something wrong. We still have to investigate what exactly was the issue. Overall, it was a good weekend for us though. Carlos was strong and consistent and I am happy for him and the whole team for scoring his first podium for Scuderia Ferrari. After a difficult year in 2020, this was a great reward for everyone, both at the track and back home in Maranello, and the team fully deserves it.”
Heartbreaking pic.twitter.com/8Mk5FtJKXy
— Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) May 23, 2021
Sergio Perez – 4th (Red Bull):
“Today is a great day for the Team and I’m very happy for Max, he did a mega job and now we are leading both championships. The Team did a fantastic job on strategy and the communication throughout the race was excellent. We saved the tyres and used them when we needed to which was key and we did two or three qualifying laps to jump the queue of cars to get fourth. I was closing on Lando but he had good tyres left and I never really had a clear chance at him. I was thinking of the long game and getting the points which is important for the Team. The cars are just so wide these days but it is what it is. We managed to minimise the damage from Saturday and I think once I’m more comfortable with the car in qualifying, we’ll be in serious contention and fighting for victories as I’m happy and pretty much there on Sundays.”
Sebastian Vettel – 5th (Aston Martin):
“I am happy with fifth place today and it is great for the team to have both cars inside the points. This result is down to great decision-making on the pit wall and having good pace in the car when it mattered. I knew that the two laps before my pit stop would be crucial to our race, and I was able to put in some good lap times on tyres that were past their best, and that made the difference [gaining two places by the overcut]. It was very tight when I came out of the pit lane because I knew [Pierre] Gasly was very close. It is not easy racing wheel-to-wheel up the hill to Casino Square, but we won the drag race, and he had to back out of it. Street circuits can always throw up the unexpected, and we rose to the challenge today.”
Mattia Binotto – Team Principal (Ferrari):
“A weekend of very contrasting emotions for us. Today we had a real chance of winning and so, to leave Monaco with just the points for second place is a touch disappointing. On the other hand, there’s the satisfaction of Charles securing a great pole position yesterday, as well as Carlos’s first podium in red and especially the signs that the team is making progress step by step. I was very pleased to see Charles at the podium ceremony to celebrate Carlos’s second place with the team. It was a very difficult day for him but he wanted to be with us at what was still an important moment for the team. This is another example of what #essereFerrari means and it is with this sort of attitude that one builds for the future. Now we have to focus on the next round in Baku. We know it’s going to be difficult to be as competitive as we were at this track. It will be important for us to keep going down the path we have taken.”
Valtteri Bottas – DNF (Mercedes):
“Sitting in the car at the pit stop, I knew it was a slow one and I was calculating Sainz getting past, then Norris, and when it got to 30 seconds, I couldn’t believe it. It’s obviously hugely disappointing and we need to learn so it never happens again. It was bad luck from my side and as a team, it will be a priority for us to improve our pit stops moving forward. Our pit stops haven’t been our strongest point this year – there’s no one to blame, as a team we just need to be better. Between lap 15 and 20, it was a good margin between Max and I but when Max started to lift his pace, I noticed my front left started to give up more than his and I lost some ground. There was a gap when I stopped and perhaps it would have been difficult to fight for the win, even though we would have fought hard, but second place should have been possible today. We’ll have a meeting to go through the race in detail on Tuesday, to understand what I could do better and what we can do better, then we’ll move on and get ready for Baku.”
Sunday 🇮🇩
Bad luck. Can’t put into words how disappointing it is to DNF. With the efforts we have put into this weekend again and to get 0 points. Learning day for us as a team. But we stick together & come back stronger!#VB77 #F1 #MonacoGP@mercedesamgf1 @f1
📷 S.Etherington pic.twitter.com/QzL78DAWgJ— Valtteri Bottas (@ValtteriBottas) May 23, 2021
Pierre Gasly – 6th (AlphaTauri):
“It was a pretty long race and obviously with Lewis behind it wasn’t easy, I couldn’t make any mistakes and just had to focus on my own race ahead, but I really enjoyed it. Finishing P6 today is good, I think we can be happy with that result and it’s the best performance of the season so far. The car felt really good in the first stint but once we put the Hards on we really struggled, and it made it pretty difficult on a couple of occasions with Lewis but I’m happy we managed to keep him behind. I believe we took the right strategy today, we had to cover ourselves with Lewis’ pitstop, but it didn’t quite work out. It was very tight between Seb and I going up the hill, I was quite surprised to see him and there was maybe just a finger between our tyres, but it was great racing. The car performed well today, even if I think we could have achieved more and there are definitely some areas we still need to improve in compared to some of the cars we’re fighting against. I’m still pleased with this result though, it was important for us to be back up near the front and getting some big points again was great for the team.”
Otmar Szafnauer – Team Principal (Aston Martin):
“Sebastian produced a truly impressive drive today, finishing fifth after a tough race in which he never put a wheel wrong. He spent the early laps in a solid seventh place, keeping in touch with Lewis [Hamilton] in sixth. Then, in the pit stops, he delivered on an excellent strategy devised by our strategists and engineers to jump both Lewis and Pierre [Gasly]. Checo [Pérez] then jumped Sebastian but he had a net gain of two places: the outcome was P5. The way Sebastian exited the pit lane and held off Pierre up the hill to Casino Square was white-knuckle stuff: in fact, it was the highlight of the race, and Sebastian was duly voted Driver of the Day, which was both welcome and deserved. Lance also drove extremely well, pushing hard when it mattered to make the overcut work against Ocon and Giovinazzi. His pace was strong and it was a gutsy performance to gain four positions on a circuit on which gaining places is notoriously difficult. So, overall, we are pleased to have scored a total of 14 World Championship points here in Monaco today. Roll on Baku!”
Lewis Hamilton – 7th (Mercedes):
“Congratulations to Max and his team, they did a better job today. For our team, it’s through our losses and our mistakes that we always grow stronger. This has definitely been a poor weekend overall in terms of our performance, but this team has shown time and time again, how we come back fighting. There’s no finger pointing, we win and we lose together – we just need to find our feet and stay cool, we have 18 races left and there’s a long way to go in this fight. We’ll be working hard because we need to make sure this doesn’t happen again. There’s no reason why we should be performing like this on any weekend with all the experience we have together as a team. We’ll have some good discussions internally, it’s painful to learn these lessons but we’ve done it many times before.”
Lance Stroll – 8th (Aston Martin):
“Both cars scoring points in Monaco is a good day for the team. We executed a great strategy and picked up some deserved points for our hard work. It was not easy to race on the hard tyre in the first stint, especially at the start, but I was able to launch well off the line. That gave us a platform for the rest of the race, which came to life late in the stint as we pushed to make the overcut viable or be ready in case the Safety Car came out. We gained three places through the overcut in the end and had strong pace to the end, too. We are still learning every race and we can be proud of the job we did today. We will work hard to keep up this momentum in Baku.”
Esteban Ocon – 9th (Alpine):
“It’s been a positive race for us today with ninth place and our fourth points-scoring finish in a row. We managed to overtake Giovinazzi on our strategy – thanks to a great pit-stop from the team – but we missed out on Stroll who was very quick on the harder tyres. I’m happy to score points again, especially after defending so much at the end. I think we can take some good things from this race on a weekend that was not easy for us. We’ve learnt a lot, we’ve been taught a few things, which will only help us moving forward. I’m sure there’s more to come from us.”
We fought until the end!! P9 is a good result looking at our pace this weekend!
Happy with that !
We keep pushing! #EO31 pic.twitter.com/UkgfLEujao— Esteban Ocon (@OconEsteban) May 23, 2021
Toto Wolff – Team Principal (Mercedes):
“Days like today are the ones we learn the most but that doesn’t stop the experience from feeling awful. We had a pretty terrible race day on Sunday, we had a lot of degradation with Valtteri, while still being in the hunt for the podium. Then we machined a wheel nut at the stop, which has never happened to that extent before, and he was forced to retire. With Lewis, we just didn’t have the pace in the car – it’s as simple as that. The undercut looked like the only feasible way of clearing Gasly and there wasn’t any mistake, the outlap was good, the pit stop was OK but it just wasn’t enough. You have to take a weekend like this on the chin – today we lost a few points but this is a long championship, it is going to swing back and forth and in the end we will see in Abu Dhabi who has their nose ahead. We will regroup and look back, as much as it hurts, to learn the lessons and come back stronger.”
Andreas Seidl – Team Principal (McLaren):
“An iconic racetrack with an iconic Gulf livery and P3 in Monaco. What a Sunday afternoon. Congratulations – and a big thank you – to the entire team, especially to those at the MTC in development and production. Together with our colleagues at Mercedes HPP, they gave us a quick car this weekend. The race team here at the track did a great job ensuring we had a reliable car, strategy made all the right calls and we had excellent pit-stops. Monaco is a tough weekend for the whole organisation, but a big thank you to everyone in the team, who made this weekend possible. Lando was flying all weekend and gave us a great result. Daniel had a very tough one. We’ll put that behind us as quickly as possible. He was quick in Barcelona and had good speed in the second half of the race here – that’s what we’ll be taking to Azerbaijan. We’ll head home now, reset, recharge the batteries, and turn our thoughts to a very different street race in Baku.”
Antonio Giovinazzi – 10th (Alfa Romeo):
“It’s really good to finally be back in the points. The pace throughout the weekend was really good and this top-ten finish is the reward for it. On a different track, where overtaking is possible, we could have been in P8, but we need to be happy with this result and the way the team delivered an excellent weekend. We have done a lot of progress and this point will work as a good motivation for all of us, with so many races still ahead of us. I’m looking forward to Baku now, another street race on a track I love. If we produce another great weekend like this, we will have all it takes to bring home another good result.”
Un punto, solo un punto, solo il primo di molti altri 👊🔥
.
We leave #MonacoGP with the joy for our first point and confident for others ⚔️💪#AlfaRomeoRacing #AG99🐝 pic.twitter.com/baxNPfuWXq— Antonio Giovinazzi (@Anto_Giovinazzi) May 23, 2021
Kimi Raikkonen – 11th (Alfa Romeo):
“It wasn’t the busiest afternoon for me today, we moved up a few places but not much else happened. That’s how it often goes here. We showed some good pace and this should help us in the next races, but here in Monaco passing is so hard even if you have a big pace advantage. It is what it is but we can be happy for the team scoring its first point of the season.”
Daniel Ricciardo – 12th (McLaren):
“This has just been a bit of a weekend to forget for me, unfortunately. The race was always going to be tricky after a difficult qualifying session yesterday and that’s how it turned out. I struggled a bit at the start on the Medium and that pretty much decided our race. The second stint on the Hard was encouraging and the lap-times really started to improve, but by that point there wasn’t much more I could do given how hard it is to pass here. I’ll just have to figure out what happened and just step away for a few days to switch off a little bit before going again in Baku. On the positive side, it was a great result for Lando and the team, so congratulations to everyone. It shows the pace is there in the car and that we’ve just got to work at unlocking it, but that will come with time and mileage.”
Frederic Vasseur – Team Principal (Alfa Romeo):
“It’s great to finally be off the mark and bring home the top ten finish we deserved. We have made great steps forward in the last year, and especially lately: the pace we have shown throughout the weekend demonstrates it. We had a car in Q3 for the first time and continued putting both in Q2; we had the pace to make progress and everyone, from the crew to the drivers and the pitwall, did a very fine job today. Our good race pace would have allowed us to finish even higher on any other track, but we can be very pleased with what we showed. It’s a big motivation boost for everyone in the team and can give us confidence to do even better in the next few races, starting in Baku.”
Fernando Alonso – 13th (Alpine):
“It was a disappointing weekend as we didn’t score points. As a team, we were expecting more coming into this one. My race wasn’t too bad, starting seventeenth and finishing thirteenth, overtaking two cars on the first lap with some risks. Our second stint was quite long on the Softs, but they seemed to work quite well. I am satisfied with the race but starting so far back in Monaco is always difficult and we need to improve for Baku.”
George Russell – 14th (Williams):
“It was a pretty straightforward race and we finished where we deserved to be with the pace of the car. The race was uneventful, with nothing too exciting going on, but that’s just Monaco sometimes. The performance wasn’t as good as we had hoped but that wouldn’t have changed the result. Nevertheless, putting this car flat out around the streets of Monaco, lap after lap was really fun. Next up is Baku and we will keep on pushing.”
Monaco Grand Prix, Sunday 23rd May 2021. Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Nicholas Latifi – 15th (Williams):
“It was a very tricky race, probably the trickiest race I have done so far in Formula One, but I think I managed it quite well. It is definitely a track that doesn’t suit our car, either on low or high fuel, with the low speed corners and the bumps. It was very tough out there to manage, but I feel like I looked after the tyres as best I could. I did have some more pace than George at various points in the race, but ultimately, we wouldn’t have been in the position to score points. There was no Monaco chaos, but that’s just how it goes sometimes here.”
Yuki Tsunoda – 16th (AlphaTauri):
“Starting from P16 we knew it wouldn’t be easy. I struggled for grip in the first lap compared to other cars around me and we lost a few positions, after that I was constantly behind cars, despite having strong pace, so wasn’t able to make my way forward. The main thing for me is my Qualifying performance and how I can improve this. I’m going to work hard ahead of the next race so that we can hopefully be in a point scoring position next time out.”
Nikita Mazepin – 17th (Haas):
“The race was very intense. Ever since I started racing in single-seaters I haven’t had so much required concentration, because on this track, even though we’re one of the slowest teams, everything flies by so much. There was a moment when I was going through turn 14, I just felt like I touched the wall, and that’s where Charles (Leclerc) went off yesterday, I mean there was just really no margin for mistakes. The car was quite difficult to drive fast out there but we’ve made good progress within my internal team since Barcelona and that’s a very positive picture.”
Mick Schumacher – 18th (Haas):
“We had a small issue for a few laps and unfortunately I lost a lot of time to the guys ahead and I had to let Nikita (Mazepin) by because we didn’t manage to fix it before. After that the pace was quite good, I felt we were quite close to matching the pace in the midfield which was good, and we caught up to Nikita. We didn’t do a switchback which was ok, it was understandable – obviously, we had quite a few guys behind us so there was going to be blue flags. Overall, lots learned this weekend, with some positives and some negatives but we live and we learn I guess. I’m already looking forward to Baku.”
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