Sergio Perez held off Carlos Sainz Jnr with worn tyres to win a shortened and rain-affected Monaco Grand Prix where the top four were separated by three seconds.
Perez absorbed intense pressure from Sainz over the final ten minutes of the race to claim his first Monaco Grand Prix victory. Max Verstappen took third to extend his championship lead over Charles Leclerc, who finished fourth.
Just 10 minutes before the formation lap prior to the start of the race, rain began falling over Monaco, throwing the already busy grid into chaos.
As teams struggled to decide whether to start the race on dry or wet tyres, race director Eduardo Freitas announced that the start of the race would be delayed. During the delay, the rainfall increased dramatically, soaking the circuit. After a 16 minute delay, the formation lap eventually began behind the Safety Car, with all 20 cars commanded by the race director to run on the extreme wet tyres.
The rain only became more intense during two formation laps behind the Safety Car and the start was aborted with all cars brought into the pit lane. After a delay of over an hour from the original scheduled start time.
The race officially began under Safety Car conditions before racing finally getting underway with a rolling start at the beginning of lap three, with Leclerc leading away from team mate Sainz and the Red Bulls of Perez and Verstappen.
Pierre Gasly took a gamble on intermediate tyres at the start of the race and set the fastest lap at the end of the fourth racing lap. That prompted a pair of drivers further down the order – Sebastian Vettel and Yuki Tsunoda – to also make the switch to the intermediates.
Despite Gasly catching and passing drivers on wet tyres, the leaders chose to stay out on their own wet tyres, with Leclerc pulling a five-second gap over his team mate Sainz with Perez two-and-a-half seconds from the second Ferrari. By lap 14, Perez reported that he felt intermediates were now the right option, before Sainz…