Important times to look out for:
Practice 1 (27 May) – 14:00 – 15:00
Practice 2 (27 May) – 17:00 – 18:00
Practice 3 (28 May) – 13:00 – 14:00
Qualifying (28 May) – 16:00 – 17:00
Race (29 May) – 15:00 – 17:00
The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya provided trials and tribulations throughout the grid. Most notably with Red Bull snatching a 1-2 finish from the hands of a comfortable Leclerc after engine failure before the midpoint of the race. The tally of DNFs between the two championship contenders now stands at Verstappen’s two, to Leclerc’s one.
The podium places were finished up by Mercedes-AMG driver George Russell, who enjoyed a clean race with a mega defence of Verstappen for a number of laps. Reading into this could signify that the woes of the W13 Formula 1 are nearing their end although it still quite isn’t at the same level of the Ferrari F1-75 or RB18. Alas, the biggest issue faced by the team of proposing seems to have been eradicated.
Hometown hero Charles Leclerc will be looking to quash his Monaco curse this weekend and bounce back from the ill-reliability of Spain. The title contender retired in both 2018 and 2019 while failing to start from pole position in last year’s race. In the most recent edition of the Monaco Historique Grand Prix, the Monegasque also had the misfortune of brake failure and caused minor damage to the ex-Niki Lauda 1974 Ferrari 312B3 on a parade lap. The silver lining of this could mean that his bad luck for his home circuit has already been served!
Speaking of parades, while the 2022 Monaco Grand Prix will undoubtedly entice the rich and famous to one of the most prestigious motorsport events on the calendar, more recent seasons of the hybrid era have yielded fairly unimaginative races which have often been called 20-car processions. With less aerodynamic wake and tricky-to-drive cars, this year may be slightly different although we are not holding our breath.